Gapminder has realised some fantastic graphs about the FIFA Worldcup.
For instance, for a view on how uneven the participation in the Worldcup is, click here. For instance, 53 countries in Europe competes for 13 spots in the Worldcup. Africa competes for 5, with Asia competing for 3. More than half of the teams competing in the Worldcup are from rich countries. Click here to see this visualised.
On the question of whether popilous countries far better, click here. Although it seems harder for a very small country to be successful, Slovenia and Uruguay shows that it is possible.
Next is the question of whether rich countries far better than poorer countries? Here you can see the correlation between income and the ranking made by the International Football Association, FIFA.
Gapminder is making statistics a beautiful game….
To this point, the spirit in South Africa around the Worldcup is great. I hope that our teams exit will not mean an end to the euphoria that is still ruling the cities.
It is sad that your team is out of the World Cup, but at least it left with a nice victory. The Gapminder tool is indeed nice. We had some discussions in the office yesterday about the rather disappointing performances of African teams. Is this because of the fact that almost all players from the African teams play abroad due to the weak national football leagues in Africa? The football leagues in Europe are most advanced but the leagues in South America as well as in Asia have developed during the last decade. Well, the football business…that’s another story. Btw: great graphical analysis of the tactics of the games can be found here: http://www.zonalmarking.net/