expect they have a chance of being nominated by the national coach, but about whose skill
the national coach has less then perfect information, should increase their effort during
the nomination period so as to jam the signal the national coach will receive about their
ability. We would therefore expect that the performances of these players in club matches
should improve (relative to their colleagues) during the ”nomination season”.
We test this prediction using a panel dataset on the German Soccer League (1. Bun-
desliga) in the seasons 2006/07 and 2007/08. A subset of players belong to nations that in
summer 2008 participated in the Euro Cup, the most prestigious international soccer Cup
alongside the World Cup.8 The national team coaches announced which players would
participate in the so-called Euro 2008 at the end of the 07/08 season. In our differences-
in-differences analysis, the treatment group consists of all players who are nationals of a
country qualified for the Euro 2008, and the treatment period is taken to start on the day
the player’s nation qualified. In players from nations that do not participate in the Euro
2008 we have an exceptionally good control group, since these players work in exactly the
same environment as players from qualified nations but do not face the additional career
opportunity of the upcoming Cup.
Our data contain a variety of individual output measures, such as goals, shots on
goal, duels won, passes received, and cross passes, as well as player substitutions during
the game. In addition, data are available to control for several factors that should affect
performance, such as whether the match takes place ‘at home’, the player’s field position
in a match, the player’s current club, and the opponent team. Further controlling for
constant quality differences between players, we find only weak evidence for a positive
average impact of Euro Cup qualification on individual output. A likely cause for the
absence of a strong average effect is that only a subset of players in the treatment group
have a realistic chance of being nominated for their national teams.
To distinguish between players with different nomination chances, we construct a time-
varying variable measuring a player’s recent national team exposure, equal to the num-
ber of the player’s national team participations divided by the total number of national
team matches, both counted since the 2006 World Cup. A differences-in-differences-in-
differences analysis using this variable shows that the impact of the Euro Cup treatment
8The Euro Cup and the World Cup each take place every four years. The last World Cup was in 2006.
There are some other international cups, such as the Copa America or the Africa Cup of Nations, but
these are not close to being as important (in terms of media coverage, premia paid by national teams,
etc.) as the Euro and the World Cup.