Liam Sweeney on Sweden’s talent pathway

Traditionally, national talent development pathways are based on one of two philosophies. For instance, some associations concentrate their investment on their most promising youngsters, while others prefer to spread their resources more widely. These theories are all well and good, but what can data from the Swedish FA tell us about how players actually reach the summit of the global game? And what does it reveal about how best to manage the difficult (and under-researched) transition between the junior and senior ranks?

• Most senior internationals in this study had also represented Sweden at youth level, but they climbed the pyramid by a range of different routes.

• Similarly, those players came through the ranks at various youth academies, both inside and outside Sweden.

• The lack of clear patterns suggests a need for a flexible approach to talent development, and underlines the requirement for further research in this valuable area.

Part 1: Background and methodology
This study aimed to build up a detailed picture of how Swedish footballers progress through the country’s youth system to the senior national team. The researchers examined the careers of 313 players who had represented the senior national side between 2011 and 2023, and/or the U-21 side between 2011 and 2022. Their data showed the age at which those players were first selected for youth national teams, when they made their senior debuts, and which youth academies (in Sweden and abroad) they played in as youngsters. 

Part 2: Results
The overarching conclusion of the study is that there is no ”one size fits all” path to the top of international football. Nevertheless, there did appear to be some potentially significant correlations in the data. For instance, the younger a player is when he receives his first youth international call-up, the earlier he is likely to make his senior debut. Moreover, full internationals who had not previously been capped at youth level were more likely to have trained in the Swedish lower divisions than players who had been selected for national youth teams. 

Part 3: Implications and future research
Although the majority of the full internationals in this dataset had previously represented Sweden at youth level, the study did not reveal a clear progression to the senior side. This suggests that a flexible approach to talent development could help associations nurture more potential internationals. A broader study taking in multiple countries would be a useful way of testing this hypothesis, while an examination of the specific methods used in youth academies (as opposed to their relative positions in the football pyramid) could reveal best practice. 

Paper citation
Sweeney L, Kalén A, Ivarsson A, Lundberg TR (2025) The developmental pathways of senior international soccer players: A 13-year analysis of the career trajectories of the Swedish men’s senior international team. PLOS ONE 20(3): e0316216.

You can read the full paper here.