qualification
Euro Cup qualification matches decisions
jt'∣"
(national team compositions flexibel) //■
ʌ I
national coaches
announce Euro Cup
team members
July 2006 21 Nov 07 june 2Q08
World Cup
Euro Cup
Figure 3: Timeline
simplify the analysis and focus on the rivalry between agents for nomination, but it makes
sense to think of Wi as a function of i’s reputation. In the nomination contests for national
Euro Cup soccer teams that we will analyze, Wj includes the expected monetary (premia
for cup participation, possible endorsement revenues, improved career prospects) and non-
monetary (honor and fame) returns from participation in a prestigious international Cup.
One would expect the following relationships due to post Cup career concerns. First, the
higher the prior precision hi (and hence also the posterior precision, hi + hε), the lower
Wi . An international Cup is likely to make the biggest difference in terms of future career
prospects for players about whose ability the market is still rather uncertain. Related to
this, hi is also likely correlated with the seniority of a player, which means that players
with low hi typically also have a longer career ahead of them and therefore more to gain
from Cup participation. Second, a superstar, i.e., a player with a very high reputation
relative to other players, may not have as much to gain as less famous players. Last, in a
model with more than two agents one would expect Wi to depend more explicitly on i’s
rank within the set of nominated players. In national soccer teams, the ”last” players to
be nominated are likely to spend most or even all of their time in reserve, and hence have
few opportunities to shine.
3 Data and Institutional Characteristics
3.1 Euro 2008 qualifications and player nominations
Our empirical analysis focuses on the time period between the end of the World Cup 2006
on July 9, 2006, and the end of the 2007/08 soccer season on May 17, 2008. As illustrated
by the timeline in Figure 3, the qualification matches for the Euro 2008 started shortly af-
ter the World Cup. All eligible nations, fifty in total for the Euro 2008, usually participate
12