World Cup 2006 has finished but its memories are still fresh to millions of people around the world. Here, I have compiled a list of 50 amazing things related to World Cup 2006. Well, the figure is a little bit more than 50 but I gave the title because 50 is a round figure. Instead of just writing about the matches and players, I have tried to broaden my outlook and included several other categories like sponsors and business, internet and technology etc. The list has been arranged in random not according to the value or importance of the items.
In most cases, I have tried to credit the source of the information with a hyperlink. If you feel that I have not credited a source properly or failed to credit a source, please, let me know in the comment section and I will fix it. Secondly, if you feel that there is any factual error please inform me too. Finally, feel free to add whatever interesting fact or figure that you like in the comment section and if I can find enough materials then I will surely post a follow up entry in this blog tomorrow. Now enjoy the list.
Matches and Teams
1. An all European Semi-final and final after 1982 and surprisingly Italy was champion in 1982 too.
2. No Asian team could enter the second round.
3. Italy has been playing in Final match of World Cup after every 12 years since 1970 (1970, 1982, 1994 and 2006). So, according to this, Italy may reach to the final in the event of 2018.
4. No hat trick was scored in World Cup 2006, a rare thing to happen.
5. Brazil managed to win 11th consecutive matches before they lost to France. This is a new record for World Cup.
6. Brazil and Germany now jointly hold the record of playing most matches (92 matches) in all World Cup events.
7. In 2006, 8 new countries qualified in World Cup for the first time.
8. In 2006 event, Ronaldo became the leading scorer of all time.
9. 6 goals were scored in the opening match of 2006 event between Germany and Costa Rica- a record for the opening game of any world cup event.
10. Argentina's thrashing of Serbia and Montenegro by 6-0 was considered to be the best match of the tournament by many people. In this match, all 3 substitute players of Argentina scored.
11. Record number of cards shown in 2006 event and the match between Portugal and the Netherlands saw 16 yellow cards and 4 red cards.
12. Australia could come into the quarterfinal, first time for a team from Oceania region.
13. Zinedine Zidane of France was awarded the best player but was sent off in the final match after being shown red card.
14. Switzerland did not concede a single goal but it went out from the second round on Penalty shootout. This has never happened in World Cup before.
15. Except Ghana, no team from Africa could impress.
Players, Coaches, Supporters and Sponsors
1. Injury of some players became a major cause of concern for the fans and sponsors. Injury worry about Wayne Rooney became a national nightmare for the English people and sponsors.
2. Many observers predicted that Lionel Messi would be another Maradona but most of the time he was in reserve bench in this world cup.
3. Coaches of 5 teams were Brazilian.
4. Goleo, the world cup mascot, failed to attract the people in Germany and in other countries.
5. 2 million tourists have come to Germany for World Cup 2006.
6. Thierry Henry of France committed 17 fouls- the highest for a player in World Cup 2006.
Business
1. FIFA has become richer by $1.4 billion by hosting World Cup 2006.
2. FIFA earned huge amount of money from TV rights and online rights.
3. World Cup 2006 perhaps generated $25 billion of consumption boost in the world economy.
4. World Cup 2006 might have generated 0.25% economic growth to German economy.
5. World Cup 2006 helped to boost Nepalese Advertisement sector.
6. In Bangladesh, the sale of flags of the participating country, T-shirts and jerseys and even shoes with the design of the flags of the participating countries saw a huge growth.
Television
1. 17% of the world's population or nearly 1.2 billion watched the final match of World Cup Football 2006.
2. Sale of television sets had huge growth in many countries in the world including Korea, India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
3. This was the first World Cup that could be seen totally on HDTV.
4. Mobile television was a new technology in this world cup.
5. Watching World Cup matches in giant screen in many countries of the world (both rich and poor) in the open spaces became another new trend of World Cup Football this time.
6. Viewership of World Cup 2006 compared to 2002 increased 112% in USA.
Internet
1. I must say that World Cup 2006 was the Internet World Cup.
2. Official website of World Cup broke records in terms of page views, downloads and unique users.
3. BBC Sport website generated most visitors as the source of World Cup in UK.
4. The official website of World Cup Football became one of the most popular websites in USA! Unbelievable, isn't it?
5. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft- all arranged live score-card during the matches.
6. To celebrate World Cup Football, virus senders dispatched a virus through email in Portuguese language mainly in Brazil.
Mobile Phone
1. It was surely a SMS World Cup, as millions of SMS were sent across the world.
2. Thailand may not have played in World Cup but Thai people exchanged more than 40 million SMS during world cup 2006.
3. Yahoo! Mobile Matchcast was a great thing for mobile phone users during World Cup 2006.
4. In Bangladesh, when there was load shedding SMS was the only way of getting information about World Cup.
5. Sending SMS also seen huge growth in UK.
Blogging
1. Thousands of blogs and blog entries on World Cup 2006 is a new phenomenon for World Cup Football.
2. Major US newspapers opened blogs on World Cup and in fact the blog of New York Times was the second most popular page in the website of this publication.
3. BBC World Cup blog proved to be extremely popular with huge participation from the visitors. Many of the entries received more than 200 comments.
4. In the major blog search engines like Technorati and social bookmarking websites like Netscape, tags related to World Cup were popular round the clock.
5. World Cup Blog that had blogs about 32 countries generated a huge number of entries and visitors.
Human touch
1. Two Argentine supporters died from heart attack after Argentina lost to Germany in penalty shoot out in the quarterfinal.
2. FIFA joined hand with SOS Children's Villages to raise more than 18 million Euros for charity to support poor and helpless children across the world.
3. In some countries, prisoners could enjoy world cup for the first time.
Great job, Razib! I'm glad you saw so many interesting things happen during the World Cup this year. I agree that this was the first, or at least a breakout, Internet World Cup - after all, all any of us had to do to check the video highlights was visit YouTube right after each match!
Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | July 10, 2006 5:50 PM | Permalink to Comment