In exactly 23 days, the 21st edition of the Fifa World Cup will start in Russia.
Did you ever asked yourself the following questions:
“which country taking part in the tournament has the largest population? “
“Which country has the least population?”
Can we use the “Population” criteria to predict who will definitely not win the title?
Maybe even predict who will win the title?
Is this factor worth observing at all? Well one can argue that the higher the population, the bigger the pool of potential of talents. So the probability of picking of a “dream team” is higher. Do you agree?
Let’s do some observations:
Among the countries participating in World Cup, Brazil has the highest population.
And guessed what: Brazil won the title five times. That's more than any other country.
Germany which currently has a population of 82,293,457 won the World Cup 4 times. It is 7th most populated country among the qualified countries.
However Italy which also has 4 titles does not appear in the my statistics because they have not qualified for the world cup in Russia.
So you can already see that relying on the "population" criteria to make you make your picks is not a sure bet. China is the most populated country on earth but it has qualified only once for the world cup. That was back in 2002 when world cup was held in Korea in Japan. China hasn't made it through the group phase and unfortunately the team hasn't even score goal during the tournament (Source).
But guess who won the world cup in that year: Brazil.
Here are the countries ranked according to their population
| Country | Population | Ranking |
|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 210,867,954 | 1 |
| Nigeria | 195,875,237 | 2 |
| Russia | 143,964,709 | 3 |
| Mexico | 130,759,074 | 4 |
| Japan | 127,185,332 | 5 |
| Egypt | 99,375,741 | 6 |
| Germany | 82,293,457 | 7 |
| Iran | 82,011,735 | 8 |
| France | 65,233,271 | 9 |
| England | 55,268,067 | 10 |
| Korea Republic | 51,164,435 | 11 |
| Colombia | 49,464,683 | 12 |
| Spain | 46,397,452 | 13 |
| Argentina | 44,688,864 | 14 |
| Poland | 38,104,832 | 15 |
| Morocco | 36,191,805 | 16 |
| Saudi Arabia | 33,554,343 | 17 |
| Peru | 32,551,815 | 18 |
| Australia | 4,772,247 | 19 |
| Senegal | 16,294,270 | 20 |
| Tunisia | 11,659,174 | 21 |
| Belgium | 11,498,519 | 22 |
| Portugal | 10,291,196 | 23 |
| Sweden | 9,982,709 | 24 |
| Serbia | 8,762,027 | 25 |
| Switzerland | 8,544,034 | 26 |
| Denmark | 5,754,356 | 27 |
| Costa Rica | 4,953,199 | 28 |
| Croatia | 4,164,783 | 29 |
| Panama | 4,162,618 | 30 |
| Uruguay | 3,469,551 | 31 |
| Iceland | 337,780 | 32 |
The source for these numbers is here and also Wikipedia
As you can see Iceland is the smallest nation during this World Cup. Are you ruling out that such a small country can make it through the group phase? Looking at their qualification path and especially after their sensational quarter finals performance at the Euro 2016 , I wouldn't bet on that!
Uruguay is the second smallest country in the ranking. Would you dare to bet against them? Interestingly Uruguay won the first World Cup which took place in 1930 and won the title for a second time in the 4th World Cup back in 1950 where they defeated Brazil in finals.
Despite being at the bottom of the population-ranking, I believe and hope Uruguay will go far in the tournament. That's the reason why Uruguay is on my list of 12 teams in the SBC World Cup Contest which is being organized by 