Congratulations to Sweden on winning this year’s World Cup … and also to France, Qatar, Uruguay, Norway, New Zealand and Switzerland for the same thing.
No, POLITICO hasn’t been engaging in match fixing, but we have been crunching the numbers to see how all 48 of this year’s World Cup participants rank in several other categories, and the countries mentioned above all did well. There are 10 EU countries taking part.
First of all, we took each country’s FIFA ranking from the world soccer governing body. In April, France was the number one country in the world, with Spain second and Argentina third, all the way down to New Zealand, which was the 85th-ranked country in the world and therefore the lowest-ranked team in the tournament.
Then, we looked at all 48 countries to see how they ranked in terms of five other categories, starting with gross domestic product per person, according to World Bank data for 2024 (the last year for which data is available).
Stay tuned for more data visualizations today and tomorrow.