1. Where do players play?

There are a number of brilliant charts in this piece from Quartz, using Guardian data.

(click to explore)

quartz, where do players play

2. History of the World Cup ball

Lovely interactive piece from The New York Times.

(click to explore)

histroy of the world cup ball

3. The history of the Adidas World Cup ball in six seconds

Adidas earns its creative stripes with Vine.

4. Squad value

This graphic shows the squad values of each nation, including the value of the highest paid players.

The disparity between the value of certain nations’ squads doesn’t seem to have translated to performance, as minnows such as Costa Rica and the USA are still alive at time of writing.

(click to enlarge)

world cup squad value

5. The 12th Man

This is an informative interactive infographic showing social media activity in several areas and data about each nation.

The tool shows most popular tweets and photographs, which give a good insight into how the World Cup has crossed over into other areas of culture.

(click to explore further)

the 12th man

6. How much football does each nation play?

Via designer Thibaud Tissot. This image shows population, with registered and unregistered football players inset.

(click to enlarge)

how much football doe seach nation play

7. The business of the World Cup

If you’re wondering just how much money FIFA stands to make, the following graphic will probably help to explain a lot of the political discourse concerning FIFA’s conduct right now.

(click to enlarge)

the business of the world cup infographic

8. How the USA scored

More goodness from The New York Times with its visualisation of USA’s goals against Ghana.

(click to see more)

us goals - how they were scored

9. The history of World Cup final stadiums

(click to enlarge)

history of world cup stadiums

10. England’s performances at World Cups – a sad addendum (as an England fan)

england's world cup performances