Lago Peñas, CarlosLago Peñas, SantiagoLago Peñas, Ignacio2021-06-302021-06-302019Lago-Peñas C, Lago-Peñas S, Lago I. Player migration and soccer performance. Front Psychol. 2019 Mar 21;10:616. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.006161664-1078http://hdl.handle.net/10230/48019The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between migrating soccer players and the annual ranking of the national teams according to the World Football Elo Rating. The sample includes annual data for 243 countries over the period 1994–2018. Migration is captured with the number of migrating players by country in the “big-five” leagues. The causal relationship between the two variables is examined by using Granger causality test. Four control variables are included: the political regime, per capita income, population, and regional soccer confederations. It was hypothesized that (i) the better the ranking of the national teams in the Elo rating, the higher the number of migrating players in the “big-five” leagues (shop-window hypotheses) and that (ii) while the shop-window effect takes place in the short-run, the annual Elo rating of a national team is positively affected by expatriate players in the medium or long-run, but not in the short-run (blending hypotheses). The results shed light on two crucial issues. First, causality mainly goes from national soccer performance to migrating soccer players rather than the other way around. Second, the timing of the two effects is quite different. While those players giving an outstanding performance when their national team is doing well are immediately bought by clubs from more highly ranked leagues (the shop-window effect), it takes at least 4 years for the additional skills acquired by migrated players to have a positive effect on the national soccer performance (the blending effect).application/pdfeng© 2019 Lago-Peñas, Lago-Peñas and Lago. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00616Football associationPlayer migrationNation’s soccer performanceEndogeneityGlobalizationPerformance analysisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess