Egalitarianism makes organizations stronger: Cross-national variation in institutional and psychological equality predicts talent levels and the performance of national teams

•We test whether cross-national variation in egalitarianism predicts talent levels and national team performance.•Hypotheses were tested in the context of national football team performance (soccer).•Institutional equality and psychological equality measures predicted performance which was mediated by top talent levels.•The findings support a serial mediation model: institutional equality→psychological equality→top talent→performance.•Psychological equality at Time 1 predicted the performance of national football teams at Time 2 more than a decade later.