Issues-Based Support in the World Cup 17 years, 10 months ago by Martey Dodoo

From the New York Times' World Cup blog comes information about a site entitled Who Should I Cheer For?. It purports to tell you which team you should, based a number of non-football related indicators, like human rights, military spending, and the number of multinational companies that call the country home.

Partly because of that last "indicator," the United States has the lowest ranking of the 30 teams that the World Development Movement, the organization behind the website, ranked. A country near and dear to my heart, Ghana, has the highest ranking. Not that it means anything, though:

In no way should this be interpreted as an overall ranking of how 'good' or 'bad' we think a country is. Whoshouldicheerfor.com is not a scientific rating of the policies of these countries in the field of international development and the environment. No attempt has been made to weight the various criteria according to their relative importance. It is intended to be a fun and interesting way to think about a serious issue – that of global poverty and the inequality between the nations competing in the World Cup. Please take it in that spirit.

Who Should I Cheer For still gets points in my book for taking an innovative angle toward the World Cup. So far their blog is not that interesting, but I will probably stop by later on in the week to see if their posts get more exciting.