true story. had the idea to put this together after watching cape verde's incredible cinderella run. digging into the dimensions of a nation that dazzled the world with skill, passion, and a love for the game that won people over everywhere.
these are the same 11 on each side. but there's so much data that gives context to what they represent, which makes stories like cape verde going toe to toe with the biggest world cup nations even more remarkable. no wonder the nation ranked 175th in population in the world is arguably number one in popularity.
this is a collection of the micro and macro data for each country. play the tournament with it, choosing different data sets game to game, phase to phase.
data sets marked ↓ flip the logic: the lowest value wins.
shorter commute beats longer commute.
lower carbon emissions beats higher.
lower numbers but greater quality of life.
important: there are tons of asterisks attached to each data point. because they were gathered both by manually googling and by extensively using ai. so look through those lenses, and with those asterisks.* the full source list is at the bottom of the page.
this is not scientific. but it makes the field much bigger, layered and deeper. with all 48 nations, and everything the 11 on each side carry with them and represent.