32 countries qualified to the Football World Cup in South Africa. In Gapminder World Cup you can see how they score on some football- as well as development indicators.
- Is the World Cup mostly for rich countries?
- Are rich countries generally more successful than poorer countries?
- Are populous countries better than smaller countries?
Statistics isn’t everything
Brazil is the highest ranked team in the world according to FIFA:s ranking. They have 26 times as many registered football players in the country as North Korea, the lowest ranked team in the World Cup. In spite of that, North Korea managed to score a goal and Brazil only won by 2-1. See this in Gapminder World Cup.
Who will qualify to the second round?
Europe got a bit of a bad start while the Americas were quite successful. Halfway through the qualifying round, the map looks like this:
Blue countries are first or second place in the group (in the qualifying position) and red means no qualification halfway into the qualifying leg. Follow the development here.
You’ve got your England vs UK all mixed up…
Yes, we are sorry about that, that should be explained. Since most other development data is for UK and not separate for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, England is not present in the overall development statistics in Gapminder World. We therefor choose to symbolize England with the UK in order to be able to compare it with other Data. If we’ll find a solution before the World Cup is over we will of course correct it as soon as possible.