Football is a truly global phenomenon. Statistics about the real support are problematic, but there are estimates of up to 3.5 billion fans of football globally. A study conducted in 2006 by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which represents 211 members as the global governing body of football, estimated 270 million people being active in football worldwide. FIFA’s data give a rough idea of the global importance and global distribution of the phenomenon football, even if the numbers will have changed since this study was conducted.
From the statistics published, Asia emerged as the biggest player with 85 million footballers (Europe 62, Africa 46, North- and Central America with the Caribbean 43, South America 27, and Oceania 0.5 million). In terms of population share, Europe, South America and North/Central America with the Caribbean are ahead of other regions with about 7 per cent of their respective populations.
European football remains the most relevant globally, when it comes to the revenue of its national sports leagues. England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France (with Monaco) have the most profitable football leagues in the world. This makes the European administrative body, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) the perhaps most important of the six continental confederations that are part of FIFA.
UEFA consists of 55 national members, which in part are also on the Asian continent. According to their 2016 report, 20344 players were participating in UEFA competitions back then. Here, geography plays an important role in understanding the global dynamics of football. European football leagues see significant inner-European flows of talents into the most prestigious leagues. But being such an important player internationally, 1374 international players from outside the UEFA countries compete in UEFA tournaments. In comparison, the largest single national representation from within Europe is that of Spain with 865 players. It should be noted that these numbers do only count those in the European competitions, rather than all players in national leagues.
Tag Archives: football
World Cup Cartograms
The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia has not been without controversy from the very beginning, starting with corruption allegations during the selection procedure to the most recent political incidents. And yet, the ball is rolling and the sporty side of the event is now getting more attention. From a data perspective, football world cups have become a gold mine that also helps to put a spotlight on the geographical landscapes of one of the most popular sports around the world. The world cup has become a game of dominance of European and South American dominance, while part of the appeal of the game is the unexpected success of ‘underdogs’ that beat the big players. The following maps are taken from a new series of football cartograms made for the Worldmapper website that visualises over eight decades of the event’s history. This is the shape of the football world:
World Cup Statistics
Where is all the football gone? While it’s another four years now to wait for the next Football (Soccer) World Cup, there is plenty of statistics to look back at from this year’s tournament in Brazil. “World” cup of course only applied to a small number of countries from around the world, as only 32 nations have qualified for the event. And then, one after another leaves early, so that the number of matches adds to the representation of countries and regions from around the world in this global sports event that – in terms of television ratings – is only superseded by the Olympics. Here is how the world looks distorted according to the total number of matches played at the 2014 World Cup:
And there is much more data that is counted during the event. The following map series looks into some of the statistics showing the distribution of goals, cards, fouls, tackles and much more of the action that went on during the four weeks in Brazil: Continue reading
Europe in Brazil
Much has been said about Europe’s low performance at this year’s Football (Soccer) World Cup in Brazil. Defending champion Spain and also Italy went out in the first round of the tournament. However, with not only Germany and the Netherlands, but also Belgium, France, Greece and Switzerland six teams from Europe made it into the knockout stage. Two of them are still left in the semi-finals. Overall on an global level this looks much less unsuccessful than it sounded in some of the media – only some of the balances have changed within the continent compared to the previous tournament. While waiting for the semi-finals, we now looked at how the European teams performed so far. Here is the new shape of European football as it looks prior to the semi-finals (with Germany and the Netherlands still having the chance to become even bigger in these four maps):
World Cup Bites
On the first match-free day of this year’s Football (Soccer) World Cup in Brazil, one incident dominates the headlines while all fans anticipate the knock-out stage. It’s Luis Suárez and his bite into his opponent Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder that keep making the headlines. Here comes the cartographic perspective on the topic: We made all efforts to analyse all available data on this year’s bite incidents (so far) at the World Cup and ended up with the following map representation of this highly complex data set. The map makes this data immediately accessible to the lay-person showing from which country players have been biting their opponents and which countries are the most affected by bite attacks of other teams. The evidence is hardly deniable – there is a highly unequal distribution emerging in these maps:
Qatar – A Population Cartogram
High hopes of England have vanished on today’s draw of the forthcoming FIFA Football World Cup hosts, with Russia getting the event for 2018. More surprise was caused by Qatar which will be hosting the 2022 World Cup: With an area of 11,437 sq km and a population of approximately 1.7 million people, by far the smallest World Cup host in Fifa’s history.
In fact, Qatar is so small that we didn’t even bother to put up an individual map for Quatar in the Worldmapper World Population Atlas, but merged it with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain (Russia has its own map though, despite beating England’s bid).
With its new fame, Quatar’s population shall now get its own population cartogram which gives space to all the people living there and removes all those sandy areas in the south and west. Here is the Qatar gridded population cartogram:
