The World Cup of everything else…

But fear not, while World Cup fever tightens its grip for the next month (until July 13th – hold on tight!), we’ve found something worth a look at that offers somewhat of a different perspective on the countries involved. It’s perfect if you’re being asked question after question on something that you’re just not interested in, “Did you watch the game? What did you think of England? Do you think they’ll win?”

The World Cup of Everything Else has been created by the Wall Street Journal and is a fascinating interactive graphic showing how the World Cup would play out if the 32 participating countries competed in things other than football. It takes its data from The WHO, Opta, IOC and a vast number of other research bodies to highlight a wide range of interesting statistics for the non-football fans around us.

For us at Team, what was quite interesting was seeing a few health related statistics dispersed throughout the list. In World Cup season, it just gives you a brief insight that makes you think about the potential implications on healthcare for these nations, such as who are the biggest eaters of meat vs. fruit, or biggest smokers and drinkers, and what could that mean for them. Overall, it’s simply a great way of presenting data over a wide variety of subjects.

So when the football mad people all around you ask, “Do you think England will win?” you could always reply, “Well, they may not win the football, but they do have the lowest traffic death rate of any World Cup nation.” It’s sure to take somebody by surprise, and who knows, you might even change the topic of conversation.

Here’s a link to the interactive graphic.