With the World Cup almost a week away, I've been reading up on the teams headed to Brazil and trying to stay positive about the chances that the US have of making it out of the group stage. While there is no shortage of coverage on all of the major teams and players, I enjoyed Professor Stephen Hawking's World Cup Study that looks at the conditions that best suit England in a World Cup match. What it lacks in quantitative rigor, it more than makes up for in playfulness. Hawking looks at a number of factors and their correlation to England's success on the pitch, including: distance from home, game-day temperature, time of kick-off, color of jersey worn, nationality of the ref, and the team's formation. According to him, England plan to employ a 4-3-3 formation and are crossing their fingers for a European ref and a 3pm kick-off time.
As I've prepared myself to watch endless hours of this World Cup, I started wondering about past cups. Analysts keep mentioning that no European team has won a World Cup on South American soil. But I don't have a very good idea of who has won in general. I remember watching the past couple... going backwards I could remember that Spain, Italy and Brazil had won the past three. But I struggled to remember that France had won in '98. Though I think I might still own a tee shirt with the logo from the 98' World Cup on it... a weird bird of sorts...
I headed to Wikipedia to scrape the location of each World Cup, the teams that attended, and their respective performances. Once I had this information, I threw together a map of each World Cup showing all countries that attended in blue along with the host country in red. Using GifMaker.me I stitched the images together to create a single GIF of the history of the World Cup.
In more succinct form, the map below shows all countries that have attended a World Cup and is shaded to indicate the number of World Cups they have been to. Brazil, Germany, and Italy are in a league of their own in terms of World Cup pedigree -- each has been to more than fifteen cups (there have only been 19!). The most striking thing I took away from the map below was just how minimally the African continent has broken into World Cups. The only country that has consistently qualified is Cameroon, with 7 appearances.
Making it to the World Cup is absolutely an achievement, but those that have won belong to a truly elite group. There are only 8 countries that have won, they are listed in the table below and shown in the subsequent map.
| Country | # World Cup Wins |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 5 |
| Italy | 4 |
| Germany | 3 |
| Argentina | 2 |
| Uruguay | 2 |
| Spain | 1 |
| France | 1 |
| England | 1 |
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