The 2018 World Cup will come to a close on Sunday when France takes on Croatia for all the marbles, but let’s take a look at the thirty-two country field in a different way. If the teams were grouped exactly as they were for this tournament, which country would win for best education? MITili crunched some numbers and consulted the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development annual rankings from 2015 (latest results found here), pitting each country against each other in their respective World Cup groupings. Read more to find out the World Cup of education champion!
First, full disclosure, some of the best education countries in the world are not featured in this year’s World Cup tournament. If you’ve viewed the list you know that Singapore ranks number one in the world and high on the list too are Estonia, Chinese Taipei, Finland and Canada (all known more for their great education and less for their soccer prowess).
Group A would see Russia and Uruguay going through in that order, where they’d meet Portugal and Spain in the next round. Group C would feature Australia and Denmark through to meet Croatia and Iceland in round two. Group E would see Switzerland and Costa Rica through to play Germany and Sweden. And the final pairing would be the Group G winners England and Belgium against the Group H winners Japan and Poland.
The World Cup shuffles the higher seed against the lower seed in the second round, which we’ll do here. In this case, Russian would meet Spain with Spain winning a narrow victory and Portugal edging out Uruguay. Next in would be Australia over Iceland and Denmark over Croatia. The next two matches would feature Switzerland over Sweden and Germany over Costa Rica. The final pairings would see Japan over Belgium (redemption) and England over Poland.
The quarterfinals would then feature the following eight countries: Spain, Portugal, Australia, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and England. Portugal would dispatch Spain while Australia takes care of Denmark. Germany would barely knock out Switzerland as Japan makes quick work of England.
The semifinalists would thus include: Portugal, Australia, Germany, and Japan. Australia would top Portugal and again, Japan advances over Germany. In the final of a hard fought look at education standings, Japan would top Australia to hoist the World Cup! Sorry Socceroos, but this one belongs to the Samurai Blue.