It was a passing comment from Liverpool’s new head coach during their pre-season tour to the United States, but one that spoke to a defining theme of football history: a nation’s cultural norms can shape the way it plays the game.
“People often ask why a lot of Basque managers especially have arrived at this level, and why a lot of Spanish teams are winning a lot of things,” Andoni Iraola said in July.
“I always say that a sense of collectiveness is very important.
“Spain has never had the best athletes. If you analyse, in swimming, track and field, they don’t normally win medals. But in collective sports, they are very good. In football, basketball, handball, hockey — we always put the team first.
“An example is someone like Rodri. He didn’t score or make an assist, but at the end, they won the World Cup, and he won best player of the tournament. ‘Team-first’ was always integrated in how we’re raised.”
Spain has shaped the way football has been played in the 21st century — from Pep Guardiola’s paradigm-shifting possession-based style at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City to the dominance of the national team from 2008 to 2012, when they won two European Championship titles either side of their first World Cup.
Yes, star players shone in each of those sides, but Iraola’s point remains pertinent. Spain’s defining strength has long been the collective, with individuals thriving within a wider framework rather than carrying the burden alone.
Spain celebrate winning their first World Cup in 2010 (Ryan Pierse – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
This summer served as a reminder of Spanish dominance as Luis de la Fuente’s side lifted the World Cup, two years on from winning another Euros, with an approach that was not dissimilar to that which brought success with their previous golden generation. Their women are current world champions, too.
Spain’s superpower was a coherent tactical system that no other national team — or their respective talismans — could find an answer to.
At club level, Paris Saint-Germain became back-to-back Champions League winners in May, thanks to Spanish coach Luis Enrique’s fluid attacking style, packed with rotations and a cohesive network of players.
It is no coincidence their European success has come for PSG after star forward Kylian Mbappe, a player who thrives off individual accolades as much as collective success, left for Real Madrid in summer 2024.
The club PSG beat in this year’s final were Arsenal, led by Mikel Arteta, who days earlier became just the second Spanish manager after Guardiola to win a Premier League title.
A strong defensive foundation was at the heart of Arteta’s success, but their victorious season saw them share the attacking load across 18 different goalscorers — their most since he was appointed in December 2019. Summer signing Viktor Gyokeres was their most prolific player with 14 goals in the top flight, the second-lowest leading-scorer total of any Premier League champions since 2000.
Mikel Arteta’s Premier League champions Arsenal spread the attacking load across the team (Michael Regan/Getty Images For Premier League)
The Europa League champions last season? That would be Arsenal’s fellow Premier League side Aston Villa, led by another meticulous Spanish manager in Unai Emery. Amazingly, all three are from the Basque province of Guipuzcoa, population 750,000, in northern Spain.
Each of those teams had a co-operative effort woven into their style by their head coach or manager.
Iraola’s perspective on the cultural importance of football will be music to the ears of Liverpool fans, who have consistently used the sport as a shield to fight against political, social or financial adversity throughout the club’s history — an approach that reflects the values of the Merseyside city as a whole.
“Things work in general when we aren’t just selfish, when we prioritise the situations of those who have less. That happens as well in football,” Iraola said.
“The ones who don’t play, the ones who come from the academy, the ones who earn less, it’s a reference if you want to compare it with society.”
Football can shape the culture within a city, region or country, but the relationship works in both directions.
As Iraola implies, society impacts football as much as the game impacts society.
Expanding on Iraola’s comments, there are methods to measure how different countries integrate individuals into groups. One method is to look at the sociological differences between ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’.
Individualist societies typically focus on independence within social groups, encouraging personal expression, and are more accepting of differences — and are typically found in Western countries, according to studies.
By contrast, collectivist societies focus more on social harmony and prioritise the group over individual goals, with decisions made based on what is best for the wider community. These have been found to typically be most prevalent among African and South Asian nations.
The research on this topic is extensive and widely debated, but a 2026 study has re-modelled a global individualism-collectivism scale to measure where each country falls.
Across a sample of 102 nations, Nordic ones (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland) come out as the most individualist. Spain’s index score still falls within the upper echelons of an individualist culture, but is lower than some of its fellow major footballing nations, including France, Germany, Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and the Netherlands.
If cultural norms do shape footballing identities, that gap may help explain why the Spanish game has historically placed a greater premium on collective structures than some of its European neighbours.
How much these psychosocial factors directly correlate with on-pitch success remains unclear, but this would not be the first time cultural links are made between football and national identity.
In England, Scott Murray’s playful article in the first edition of magazine The Blizzard, titled How Roy Race Ruined English Football, highlighted how much the comic book Roy of the Rovers has created an unrealistic expectation of national identity that relies on the heroic acts of an individual rather than wider teamwork or tactical systems.
The comic was first published in the 1950s, but the emphasis on last-gasp winners and talismanic performances continued until the mid-1990s — with narratives that cascaded through English football culture in the decades in between.
How often have the hopes of the nation fallen on the shoulders of Kevin Keegan, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney or Harry Kane? Each generation has had a star individual who rose above the collective, with Jude Bellingham seemingly the next in line after his starring role at this year’s World Cup.
That individualist approach tallies with comments by former England captain Steven Gerrard’s last year. He told ex-England team-mate Rio Ferdinand’s podcast that the so-called ‘Golden generation’ of talented English players in the mid-2000s, which they were both part of, were “all egotistical losers”.
“It was down to the culture within England,” Gerrard said. “We weren’t friendly or connected. We weren’t a team. We never, at any stage, became a really good, strong team.”
Steven Gerrard said England’s ‘Golden generation’ at the start of this century were not a ‘friendly or connected’ unit (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
The failures of England’s previous generations were multi-faceted, but how much did the national culture feed into the acceptance of their behaviour? Gareth Southgate’s recent success as England coach was made even more impressive by the way he curated a squad made up of rival players at club level who worked together in harmony for the national team.
With the help of team psychologist Dr Pippa Grange, England cultivated a team ethos in a manner that was incongruous to generations before them — and felt somewhat jarring, based on English societal norms.
In the Netherlands, David Winner’s excellent book Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football reflects the deeply-rooted societal influence towards the style that was synonymous with ‘Total Football’ from that country’s sides in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beyond historical and political analogies, Winner makes a fascinating link between architecture and football in the Netherlands — in which its flat landscape and crowded cities meant the optimisation of space and appreciation of geometry became an inherently Dutch trait.
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It was that same appreciation of geometry that became the foundation of the Netherlands’ on-pitch success, pioneered by coach Rinus Michels and player Johan Cruyff.
While it is difficult to accurately measure its direct impact, football can often act as a mirror held up to reflect society.
The culture a manager grows up in can inevitably shape their ideas, and that becomes particularly intriguing when they take those principles to a new club or national team.
Going full circle back to Liverpool, Mohamed Salah’s summer exit means there is a gap in their squad for a new star of the show — but maybe they do not need a single individual leading the way to find new success. Team-first, as Iraola says.
If he brings the same values of his Basque and Spanish roots to Anfield, there is every reason to believe Liverpool’s new head coach will have similar success to his fellow countrymen.
