Soccernomics

With its 204 member countries, world soccer's governing body, FIFA, has more members than the United Nations. But besides being a force for good in the world — as FIFA President Sepp Blatter is fond of claiming — the game has become big business. Names like Beckham, Zidane and Ronaldo are known from Manchester to Mozambique. Our Globalist Factsheet explains.
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2514

The Socio-Economic Determinants of International Soccer Performance
This paper reports regression results identifying the variables influencing a country's performance in international soccer games. The results reveal that economic, demographic, cultural and climatic factors are important. In particular, inverted U-shape relationships are identified with respect to temperature and per-capita wealth. We also find a significant interaction between Latin cultural origin and population size, while both variables are individually insignificant. Explanations for our results are offered.
http://ideas.repec.org/a/cem/jaecon/v5y2002n2p253-272.html

The world economy will benefit most from an Italian victory at the football World Cup in June/July, according to ABN AMRO's economists in their 'Soccernomics 2006' study...

ABN AMRO's economists take as their starting point the imbalances in the world economy, above all the US current account deficit. Additional growth in Europe would cushion the inevitable correction to this situation. To achieve this, a major European country needs to win the World Cup to spark an economic upswing. The 'economic final' in soccernomics should therefore be between Germany and Italy, with Italy lifting the World Cup.
http://www.abnamro.com/pressroom/releases/2006/2006-03-22-en.jsp

Drawing Parallels between Soccer and Economics
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1171699,00.html