In towns and villages across Europe and Africa, soccer players with the nickname Messi practice their skills day in and day out. They dream of playing professionally like the football superstar, Lionel Messi, who was born to humble means in Argentina and rose to fame playing for Barcelona FC. With eyes on the recent Olympics, and its celebration of global athletes, that familiar narrative of sports as a pathway out of poverty is particularly salient.
While Messi, Djokovic and Ikaba — to name but a few examples — offer such inspiring stories, statistics suggest that sports are a ticket out of poverty for only a lucky few. In the United States, only one in 2,451 high school basketball players make it to the NBA. Going pro is even more challenging in the developing world. For the young African “Messis”, there are only six professional soccer leagues on the continent, and only 57 Africans played in the English Premier League in the 2015-16 season.
The odds are even worse for women, who have fewer professional sports opportunities around the world. Layer on poverty, and one’s chances of making the big leagues are further reduced. To make matters worse, even some of the best athletes, like those capturing our attention at the Olympics, struggle to make ends meet.
About the author
Megan Shutzer
Megan Shutzer is a documentary filmmaker and a senior consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors. She recently completed an award-winning film about Zanzibar’s women’s soccer team, "New Generation Queens: a Zanzibar soccer story." Megan is also a founding board member of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership in Washington, D.C. She has a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's in international policy studies from Stanford University.