FIFA World Cup 2018: Why prosperous nations are more likely to play and win
The more a
country and its society give liberty to its people to make choices for
their lives, the more likely it is to be a World Cup winner
More
than a seventh of humanity watched the 2014 final, where Germany became
the champions with a lone goal in the extra time. Unarguably, this
makes the 2018 World Cup the most to-be-watched sport tournament, and a
question that becomes central to discussion in the office, over tea or
lunch, and at parties, is this: Who will win this time?
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Juxtaposing
the general development and economic progress of a country with its
perceived chances of winning reveals that the probable semi-finalist
teams would be the countries with better social and economic indicators.
The world’s top betting players such as Ladbrokes, WilliamHill and
888sport have almost unanimously put Germany, Brazil, France, Spain and
Argentina as top five, while Tunisia, Iran, Panama, South Korea and
Saudi Arabia as the bottom five.
Income,
represented by gross national income per capita; health, represented by
life expectancy at birth; and freedom to make one’s choices,
represented by an index published in the World Happiness Report are the
development indicators used. Though the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia
has the highest per capita income among the 10, the top-five probables
have better incomes (see Chart 1) than the least popular teams. It also
turns out that the healthier the country, the better is its chance of
winning (see Chart 2).
The
more a country and its society give liberty to its people to make
choices for their lives, the more likely it is to be a World Cup winner.
It must be noted that all these are correlations and not causal
relations.
Interestingly,
only two of the 32 teams that are playing the finals are low human
development countries, while a majority, 18, are highly developed (see
Chart 4). The top-five probable winners are richer and developed than
the average of the tournament’s 32 nations, which, in turn, are more
prosperous than the global average.
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