I was slightly surprised to learn that Australia is richer than Japan, in terms of GDP per capita: $30,700 as opposed to $29,392. That statistic is from The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, which among various other interesting data publishes the GDPs of the countries in the competition. The reason I was looking it up was because something’s been on my mind. As of this moment nine games had been played. That means the World Cup is more than one-eighth over (boo! waah!). Guess how often the poorer country has beaten the richer one. Answer: once. Poland 0 Ecuador 2.
Why would a country’s being rich confer an advantage for the national football team? Perhaps because the richest countries will tend to attract the best players to its leagues, and that will in turn raise the standards for indigenous players in the leagues, and therefore the national side. Or something. Do I look like Steven Levitt?
Now, it’s obvious that the richest country doesn’t always win. Brazil, for instance, is 22nd out of 32 in the GDP table among the 32. But Brazil is the most populous country in the World Cup. (I’m leaving out the USA from these calculations, on the grounds that it is too big and rich and indifferent to football to count.) So we could propose the following hypothesis: the richest country will win, except when the most populous one does. It’ll be interesting to see how many exceptions there are to this: how many times a poorer, smaller country will win. Not too many is my guess.
I don't want to make it sound, in typical dismal science fashion, that Australia's victory was predetermined and inevitable. In general, Ozzies are almost as indifferent to football as Americans, and that makes their win all the more impressive. Football is about the only team sport in which Australians aren't routinely world champions. This might partly reflect the ethnic tilt of the sport Down Under. In his autobiography, Steve Waugh, who played with success as a kid until his cricket career took off, says that the game was only played by non-Anglos and was generally known as 'wog ball'.
Comments