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Côte d’Ivoire is a favoured Who Should I Cheer For? underdog. A quarter of the population lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day. Water and electricity are scarce. Life expectancy is 47 years.

At the same time Portugal is objectionable in a number of ledgers: ungenerous aid; few women in government; Cristiano Ronaldo.

But, as they say, the game isn’t played on paper. World Cup success for the Côte d’Ivoire could have a perversely unjust impact on poor West Africans by stimulating the growth of so-called ‘football trafficking’.

When Ivorians watch their captain, Chelsea’s Didier Drogba, lead out the Elephants on Tuesday they will see a role model in the fullest sense. Despite prohibitive odds, many young men consider their best chance of escaping poverty as following in Drogba’s footsteps.

So it is that thousands of unlicensed football academies have been set up in the Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana over the last decade.

Those in charge promise expert coaching, transport to Europe and arranged trials with elite professional clubs; local parents often reason that the fees are worth the sacrifice and take their sons out of school. In reality few ‘academy’ players will ever leave Africa and those that do will be travelling illegally with negligible prospect of professional football.

An overwhelming majority of academy operatives have no serious credentials. They cannot prepare their apprentices adequately or fulfil promises of trials with AC Milan and Paris St Germain. The crisis is compounded by unscrupulous agents and clubs, who take promising youngsters to Europe with no serious safety net in the (highly likely) event of their not making the grade.

The effects of the trafficking are evident to charities across West Africa and Europe. Foot Solidaire, a small Paris-based NGO, sees hundreds of abandoned would-be footballers in the French capital alone. In 2008 a BBC special report highlighted a typical trafficking story: the family of a 13-year-old Cameroonian paid €750 to an agent, travelled to Lyon and were abandoned on arrival. The previous year a leaking fishing trawler was beached in Tenerife containing 130 young African men suffering hypothermia and dehydration, among them footballers trying to reach Real Madrid.

FIFA promises it is “working hard” to address the issue. President Sepp Blatter has decried the trade in African teen footballers as “social and economic rape” and action has been promised under their ‘Win in Africa with Africa’ initiative, which aims to position the World Cup as a force for good on the continent.

Unfortunately FIFA’s corporate responsibility record is dismal with football trafficking no exception. Charities lobby in hope rather than expectation and counter-measures are few.

Foot Solidaire recently lamented in an open letter “ten years of hypocrisy, immobility and what may seem to be discrimination towards us”. They want to disseminate information across West Africa on the dangers of illegal academies but cannot get FIFA support for an annual €200,000 budget. They believe that the governing body discriminates against African groups in its funding, making a mockery of ‘Win in Africa with Africa’.

Certainly FIFA is not short of money for its preferred projects and partners. On Friday they opened the tournament with an announcement of US$196million annual profit and $1billion equity. Yet one month ago a report by South Africa’s Institute of Security Studies showed that the nation’s poorest may end up worse off (PDF) as a result of the World Cup.

This ongoing crisis gives pause for thought ahead of Tuesday’s game. The limitations of our rankings are clear. Ivorian success would doubtless feed the cycle of exploitation that blights football in West Africa. Foot Solidaire fears an increase in trafficking after the tournament.

The match itself threatens to be what some English Premier League mangers call ‘a damp squid’. At the draw in December this looked the tie of the first round – arguably the strongest two unseeded teams pitted against one another and in the same group as Brazil.

But both are on a downward trajectory. This Côte d’Ivoire team has been called (albeit wrongly) the greatest Africa has produced but they are ageing and blighted by internal conflict. Drogba enjoys an unhealthy cult of personality in the squad and new coach Sven-Göran Eriksson is an odd choice on a HPI-busting daily wage of £22,000.

Portugal meanwhile boast an unlikely double: both a weaker coach and a more narcissistic and irritating captain than their rivals. Carlos Queiroz and Ronaldo (named after President Reagan, of all people) scarcely deserved their qualification and hardly merit the favouritism afforded by the bookmakers for this game.

It is difficult to get away from supporting the Côte d’Ivoire against Portugal and World Cup success would doubtless be great for national morale. But it may be a Pyrrhic victory for a majority of young Ivorian footballers until information about illegal academies and their consequences improves.

Posted in: Cote d'Ivoire, Cote d'Ivoire-Portugal, Portugal

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.

Group G

Brazil

Brazil’s major worry coming into this tournament is, almost unbelievably, a lack of creativity. Without an in-form superstar in their attacking line-up, a weight of expectation is on the shoulders of Kaka, who has spent much of the last 12 months alternating between injured and out of sorts. With Julio Cesar, Lucio and Maicon in their back five, it is defensive solidity that is their strength this time around, much to coach Dunga’s delight presumably.

Despite 7 years of the left-wing Lula administration and social programmes such as the Bolsa Família aimed at eradicating hunger, Brazil nonetheless enter the World Cup firmly in mid-table in the Who Should I Cheer For league, thanks in part to a persistently high level of income inequality.

Ivory Coast

Like Didier Drogba’s arm, the Ivory Coast’s health system appears to be comprehensively broken, with maternal mortality figures through the roof at 944 per 100,000 births. Despite this, low national income and extremely low carbon emissions lead Cote d’Ivoire into 4th place in the Who Should I Cheer For standings.

Drogba, despite his infuriating on-field personality, is actually one of football’s most prominent champions of the poor. He is a UNDP goodwill ambassador, and once donated his £3m fee from a sponsorship deal to the construction of a hospital in his hometown Abidjan. Nonetheless, about a quarter of the population live below the $1.25 a day international poverty line, and in a group of death, and potentially without their inspirational captain, they may not gain much succour from this tournament.

North Korea

Well, what can you say really? Even the most avid of contrarians will struggle to get behind a team representing one of the most repressive regimes in the world. While their audacious attempt to sidestep FIFA’s silly mandatory three goalkeepers rule was both amusing and admirable, it is nonetheless indicative of the disconnect between incredibly strict rules at home and a cavalier disregard for international standards. With approximately 900 people per 100,000 held in prisons or labour camps, I dread to imagine the consequences of defying any of the Supreme Leader’s goalkeeping-related regulations back in Pyongyang.

Portugal

Portugal’s main failing during their recent ‘golden generation’ years has been a lack of killer instinct, which belies their curiously high military spending. Similarly, their often generous defending fails to reflect their significantly less generous 0.21% of GDP given in international aid, placing them comprehensively to the bottom of our standings, if not the FIFA world rankings.

Nonetheless, their appetite for a major trophy reflects the 6% of the country that remain chronically hungry, and with the poor form of the team under Carlos Quieroz mirroring an economy described by the Economist as “the new sick man of Europe”, riddled by both debt and corruption scandals, it’s not looking great for either.

Group H

Chile

Chile’s hosting of the World Cup in 1962 is a case in point for the often vexed intersection between football and poverty. The 1960 earthquake had devastated the country, yet Chile vowed to press on: “Because we have nothing, we want to do everything.” While it is arguable that resources for rebuilding may have been better directed elsewhere, one should not underestimate the effects of football on national morale, and a successful World Cup, coupled with an impressive third place for the hosts had a deep restorative effect on the country.

Despite sitting at a lowly 24th in the most supportable country stakes (largely due to somewhat extravagant military spending), after another enormous earthquake this February, the damage for which has been estimated at around 10-15% of GDP, Chile may be a great deal more sympathetic than it would appear.

This is without even mentioning their cavalier attacking football, typified by the free-scoring Humberto Suazo, that brought them to second place behind Brazil in the qualifiers, and may well see them get out of the group.

Honduras

After scraping through to the World Cup from a poor CONCACAF qualifying tournament, the Hondurans appear set to be the most whippingest of whipping boys, despite the presence of Premier League talents Maynor Figueroa and Wilson Palacios. A desperately poor country, the Hondurans’ delight last year at qualifying for their first World Cup since they took a point off Spain in 1982 occurred during a constitutional crisis that resulted in left-leaning president Manuel Zelaya being removed and exiled in a military coup d’état. The subsequent election has been condemned as illegitimate, with most of Latin America and much of the rest of the world refusing to recognise the election of Porfirio Sosa.

2009 also saw a period where freedom of expression, movement and habeus corpus were all suspended, somewhat belying their position at number 3 in the Who Should I Cheer For? standings, albeit perfectly encapsulating the tension between whether you would be cheering for the people, or the State.

Spain

Having posted the best inter-World Cup set of results of any international team ever, it would seem that Spain are deserved favourites. With a superabundance of attacking talent at their disposal, a world class goalkeeper in Casillas, and a surprisingly resilient defence that benefits from the opposition almost never having the ball, surely only injuries can dent Spain’s chances of finally joining the elite of World Cup winning nations. Football being football however, come the latter stages (and Spain have a relatively tough route to the final) nothing is a certainty.

Nonetheless, one can but applaud the quality of football they play, and, for a European country, a fairly respectable 8th place in our standings (thanks to low military spending, and an incredibly high rate of women in parliament) mean that Spain are a very attractive proposition for the neutral indeed.

Switzerland

Low income inequality, low military spending (surprise) and relatively low carbon emissions mean the Swiss occupy a reasonable 10th position in our standings.

While legendary coach Ottmar Hitzfeld has offered them new attacking impetus, for a famously neutral country, their team is remarkably poor at attracting neutrals of the footballing variety. Specifically, that 10th place fails to take into account their 0-0 draw with the Ukraine in the last 16 of World Cup 2006, which, though it has yet to be put to a vote at the UN, can only be described as a crime against humanity.

After a controversial plebiscite banning the construction of minarets was passed last year, liberals, Muslims and fans of enjoyable football alike may find it difficult to forgive and forget this summer.

Posted in: Brazil, Chile, Cote d'Ivoire, Group previews, Honduras, North Korea, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland

Views expressed here are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Development Movement.