2026-10-08T08:29:18Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33828448 2026-09-16T05:28:24Z category_343 portal_316 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data Sheet 1_Dispersed origins and concentrated professional entry in Colombian men's international football, 1962–2026.zip Samuel José Gaviria-Alzate (23657275) Angie Julieth Gómez-Restrepo (24960967) Wilder Geovanny Valencia-Sánchez (23657293) Sports Medicine association football athlete migration Colombia geographical concentration professional entry sport geography talent pathways <p>Colombia combines marked territorial diversity with a professional football system concentrated in a limited set of urban centres, making it an informative case for separating where elite players originate from where they enter professional competition. This retrospective observational study examined the geographical origins and professional entry points of Colombia's senior men's internationals and treated temporal composition and region-position patterning as secondary analyses. We assembled 306 unique players selected across 27 FIFA World Cup and Copa América final tournaments between 1962 and 2026, triangulated public documentary records and applied variable-specific two-source verification. Among 161 players with verified paired data, 72 (44.7%) made their professional debut in their department of birth. In the directly comparable domestic-debut subset of 154 players, birthplaces spanned 20 departments whereas professional debuts spanned 14; the three most frequent departments accounted for 58.4% of birthplaces and 70.1% of debuts. Regional shares of newly selected players fluctuated rather than shifting progressively: the Pacífica share peaked in 1990–2009 and then declined, while Caribe returned to approximately its initial share. This conclusion was unchanged when 2014 replaced 2010 as the second temporal cut-point. In the secondary region-by-position analysis, the association was small, χ²(6, N = 287) = 17.85, p = 0.007, Cramér's V = 0.18; after Bonferroni correction only the excess of Caribe-born forwards remained. The findings establish a reproducible territorial baseline: elite origins were more dispersed than professional entry, temporal composition was non-monotonic and regional origin provided little basis for positional profiling. Longitudinal data on upbringing, youth clubs, academies and migration are required to identify the mechanisms underlying professional-entry concentration.</p> 2026-09-16T05:28:24Z Dataset Dataset 10.3389/fspor.2026.1946961.s001 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_Sheet_1_Dispersed_origins_and_concentrated_professional_entry_in_Colombian_men_s_international_football_1962_2026_zip/33828448 CC BY 4.0