With the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final upon us, we thought we’d take a look at World Cup Final’s past. This year, the final soccer match will be held for the first time at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia. However, while this is Russia’s first time hosting the World Cup Final, there are some countries that have been hosts multiple times. Find out which countries have hosted the final multiple times, which stadiums have attracted the largest audiences, and most importantly, which national team has won the most cups. Discover the World Cup’s past before you tune in to watch the 21st FIFA World Cup Final, which we hear is going to be quite the matchup.

View FIFA World Cup Winners & Runners Up in a full screen map

Check out the map above to get a sense of which national teams have won the World Cup time and time again, and which teams just can’t beat the runners-up status, or read on for more insights into FIFA World Cup history.

Goooaaal: World Cup’s Top Winners

Of the 20 World Cup tournaments that have been played since 1930, only eight national teams have won the coveted cup. Of those eight World Cup holders, only three have more than three wins.

National team	Wins	Years won
Brazil	5	1958,  1962,  1970,  1994,  2002
Germany	4	1954,  1974,  1990,  2014
Italy	4	1934,  1938,  1982,  2006

As you can see, Brazil is the ultimate champion with five World Cup wins. Brazil’s first two wins were in consecutive World Cups in 1958 and immediately after in 1962. In addition to Brazil’s five wins, the team has also been runner-up in two final matches, the first in 1950 and again in 1998. In total, Brazil has played in seven World Cup finals.

Germany and Italy have both been World Cup champions four times throughout the years. However, Germany has played in two more World Cup finals than Italy, having been runner-up four times. In total, Germany has been to the World Cup more often than any other country with a total of eight times. They are also the current World Cup champions, having won the most recent World Cup in 2014.

Like Germany, Italy has four World Cup wins under its belt, and like Brazil, Italy’s first two wins were consecutive, the first in 1934 and the second in ‘38. Italy has also been the runner-up in two final matches, with a total of six final appearances.

Runners Up: Teams that Competed but Failed to Score the W

Not all teams can be as fortunate as the top three winning teams. The following national teams have been runners-up at the FIFA World Cup, but are yet to be winners.

National team	Wins	Runners-up	Years runners-up
Netherlands	0	3	1974,  1978,  2010
Czechoslovakia	0	2	1934,  1962
Hungary	0	2	1938,  1954
Sweden	0	1	1958

While the Netherlands team does hold a record, it’s not a very good one. The Dutch are known for having competed in the most World Cup finals without ever winning.

Hold the Field for Hosts

As for where the FIFA World Cup Finals take place, 16 countries have had the honor of hosting the world’s best soccer players, and some countries have hosted more than once. Hosting the FIFA World Cup is a pretty sweet deal because the host country is automatically entered to be one of the 32 teams set to compete for the World Cup.

View FIFA World Cup Locations & Attendance in a full screen map

Only three soccer or fútbol stadiums around the world can say they’ve gotten the chance to host the FIFA World Cup more than once. Estadio Azteca, Estádio do Maracanã, and Olympiastadion all have hosted the championships two times each. Estadio Azteca, located in Mexico City, Mexico hosted the World Cup in 1970 and then again in 1986. Estádio do Maracanã, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has also hosted the World Cup twice, the first time in 1950 and the second time in the most recent past World Cup of 2014. Olympiastadion, in Germany, hosted twice in 1974 and 2006.

Both Italy and France have been the host country more than once, although the location of the stadiums varied. Italy hosted the 1934 World Cup at the Stadio Nazionale PNF, and again hosted the World Cup in 1990, this time at the Stadio Olimpico. The World Cup was played in Paris, France in 1938 at the Stade Olympique de Colombes and in Saint-Denis, France sixty years later in 1998 at the Stade de France.

Home-Field Advantage

If you’re curious if the hosts of the World Cup have a home-field advantage, six out of eight teams won the World Cup when the final game was played on their home turf. Brazil and Sweden are the only two teams who have lost while the game was played at home. Notably, England and France have only ever won the World Cup when it was played at home.

Attendance for the Win: Highest Attended World Cup Finals

Some World Cup Finals are better attended than others. Here is a list of the top three most-attended World Cup Finals:

• 199,854, Estádio do Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1950
• 114,600, Estadio Azteca, Mexico City, Mexico, 1986
• 107,412, Estadio Azteca, Mexico City, Mexico, 1970

The 1950 World Cup, which was Brazil’s first time ever hosting, was unlike all other World Cups past and future in that there was no final game. Instead, the year saw a 4-team round robin tournament, the last match of which Uruguay beat Brazil on Brazil’s home turf. This round robin tournament could explain the extremely high attendance.

As for the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City? The reason for this stadium’s high attendance during two World Cups could be because spectators were dying to see Brazil vs. Italy in the 1970 final or because Argentina vs. West Germany seemed to be an interesting matchup in 1986. Or the high attendance could be because the stadium is said to be one of the most famous and highly regarded stadiums in the world.

On the other hand, France’s 1938 World Cup at in Paris at the Stade Olympique de Colombes had the lowest turnout of all of the World Cups with only 45,000 people, which is nearly ¼ the size of the highest attended World Cup. The game featured Italy versus Hungary.

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Tune in to the 2018 World Cup Final in July to see if one of the teams that have never won a World Cup wins this year, or if it goes to one of the eight teams who already got a shot at holding the trophy. Speaking of shots, if you’re less of a soccer fan and more into basketball, be sure to check out all of the NBA Finals on a Map.

There’s a good reason why most of us use smart phones to get to a new place. Unless you know a city or area really well, an address doesn’t immediately enter your mind spatially. When we can see a place—and the route to get there—on a map, it becomes clearer.

The problem grows when you have many addresses—potentially hundreds. When you want to visualize all of your holiday cards on a map or create a customer sales map you need a way to import all those addresses into Google Maps or some mapping tool.

Below you’ll find three simple steps to use when importing addresses into a map.

1. Make Sure Your Address List is in Excel or Other Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet and its similar file formats (CSV, tab-delimited, as two examples) is a universal way to move data between systems. You can share spreadsheets with almost anyone, often for free. There are also online services, like Google Sheets (part of the Google Docs Suite), that can help you quickly store and share your data.

For many people, your list of addresses may already live in Excel or another spreadsheet. That’s great! However, if you don’t yet have the data in spreadsheet form, there’s likely a way to export your contact addresses from wherever they are stored.

Export Outlook Contacts to Excel or CSV

While Outlook is best known for storing email addresses, you can also put additional contact information, such as addresses. If that’s the case, you’ll want to export them from Outlook so you can get them into a spreadsheet format.

The exact instructions will vary based on the version/edition of Outlook you own, so you’ll want to follow the Microsoft instructions. Regardless of which Outlook you have, you’ll want to look for an “Export” option in the file menu or search the program’s help option.

The best file type for your export is likely a CSV, the abbreviation of “Comma Separated Values.” This type of file is a plain text file with individual fields separated by commas. Plain text means it can be read in by any spreadsheet application, such as Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets.

Export Apple Contacts to Excel or CSV

Apple’s application for storing addresses and other information is called Contacts. It is a Mac app that comes on your computer. If you have an iPhone, those contacts are likely synced to this application.

There is not a direct way to export from Contacts to a spreadsheet file. Instead, you need to export as Apple’s vCard format. Go to the File menu, then select Export, and then the vCard option. Once that is saved to your computer, you can use a service like this Online vCard Converter to get a CSV of your contacts.

This CSV file will include comma separated values (that’s where the acronym comes from) in a normal text file. You can then read that file with any spreadsheet application.

Export Google Contacts to Excel or CSV

Outlook and Apple Contacts are both primarily computer software, whereas Google Contacts only exists as a website. Regardless, you’ll still find an export option within the tool under the “More” menu option.

As with the others, the goal is to get a spreadsheet file. You’ll get two options for CSV, a comma separated values format that is plain text. Choose either of these and download the google.csv to your computer. You can now use that file to open your contacts in any spreadsheet application.

Export Addresses from Any Application

Your contacts may be stored in another application, such as a CRM (customer relationship management) tool, sales tracker, or similar. If you can retrieve contacts in CSV format, you’ll be set. Most of these tools support CSV (comma separated values), which is a plain text file that any spreadsheet application should be able to open.

If you aren’t sure how to export your contacts, try searching the application’s help document, search using Google, or reach out to the company’s support team.

2. Remove Contacts Without Addresses

Now that you have all your contacts in a spreadsheet format like CSV, open up the file in your spreadsheet application. If you don’t use Excel or Numbers, you can add it to Google Sheets by uploading it to Google Drive. Once uploaded, there will be an option to open in Google Sheets.

Depending where your list came from, there may be contacts without addresses. For example, you may have many records with only email address stored if you export from Outlook. Similarly, your Apple Contacts may be filled with only telephone numbers if it came from your iPhone. The key in this step is to remove contacts without street addresses, because those won’t show up on a map.

In Google Sheets, click the address column and sort it:

Then you’ll be able to see all your contacts with addresses in one place:

You can copy these to their own sheet, delete the contacts without addresses, or simply leave out the non-address contacts in the next step.

3. Copy and Paste All Contacts

Your spreadsheet is now sorted with your contact addresses grouped together. Now comes the part where we put them on a map! Using address import mapping tool it’s as easy as copy and paste:

1. Select all of your contact columns from your spreadsheet, including the headers
2. Copy the selection using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C (Command+C on Mac)
3. Click into the location data box in BatchGeo and paste with Ctrl+V (Command+V on Mac).

Click the “Map Now” button and you’re done.

And in seconds, here’s the map created from my contacts:

View Import CSV Example Map in a full screen map

You’ll probably have more than just a handful, maybe even hundreds of sales leads, customers, friends, or other contacts. BatchGeo is the fastest, easiest tool to create a map from a spreadsheet of addresses. Use your own data to try it today for free!

How do I use my address map?

Once you’ve created your map, you’ll want to put it to use. Maps tell a story, and there are unlimited interpretations within them. That said, here are some things to consider for your map of contacts in your address book:

• Visualize your customers or friends: do you know what regions or neighborhoods where many of them live? Maps make these clusters stand out.
• Visit your customers or friends: search your map for nearby contacts and always be able to find those that are closest.
• Export Google Earth KML to move your geolocated contacts to other geographic systems.

These and many other possibilities are on the other side of your contact map!

Every city in the world has one thing in common: they each have a pair of coordinates, numbers that describe their location. While no cities can share both sets of coordinates (since it’s the exact location of the city), many share one of the numbers that make up their coordinate pair.

These coordinates, called latitude and longitude, are used to create maps like the one below. In addition to the cities’ exact locations, we found their nearest latitude and longitude (within 5 degrees), and you can filter the map by these ranges.

View Cities by Latitude & Longitude in a full screen map

Read on to find out more about latitude/longitude coordinates, and see some surprising commonalities when we look at cities with the same latitudes or longitudes.

What are Latitude and Longitude?

Before you can interpret the map above, you need to know about the pair of numbers used to plot map coordinates: latitude and longitude.

Latitude is the number of degrees north or south of the equator, the imaginary line that runs horizontally through the Earth.

Longitude is the number of degrees east or west of the prime meridian, an even more imaginary line because it was made up.

Stand up and imagine your feet represent an exact point on Earth. Do you know which way North is? Use one arm to point precisely North and position your other arm in the exact opposite direction. The line your pointing makes would be the longitudinal line for your location. Now move your arms to point East and West. The line formed by your arms is the latitudinal line for your location.

While latitude is determined by the equator, humans had to make up a midpoint for longitude. In 1851, Sir George Airy chose the observatory in Greenwich, England, an area of London, to be zero longitude. Thirty years later, 25 nations met to officially declare it the prime meridian.

Every point on Earth can be described by a number of degrees latitude and a number of degrees longitude. Like an algebraic plot, each number can be positive or negative. In other words, we’ve taken a circular Earth and separated it into quadrants. The mid-point of these quadrants is 0 degrees latitude (the equator) and 0 degrees longitude (the North-South line that runs through Greenwich Observatory).

Latitude increases as you go North, making the Northern Hemisphere positive latitude and the Southern Hemisphere negative latitude. Paris, for example, is at about 48, 2. Latitude usually comes first in the pairing. Latitude runs between 90 degrees South (-90) and 90 degrees North, both extremes coming at the Earth’s poles.

Longitude increases as you go East, making Eastern Hemisphere (i.e., most of Europe) positive longitude and the Western Hemisphere negative longitude. New York, for example, is at about 40, -73. It’s North of the equator and West of the prime meridian. Longitude runs from 180 degrees West (-180) to 180 degrees East. Since longitude wraps around the Earth, -180 and 180 are the same line, on the opposite side from the prime meridian.

Using the map, can you find some cities in the southeastern hemisphere? Southwestern? Which “quadrant” do you live in?

Cities on the Equator and the Prime Meridian

While much of the worth is solidly within hemisphere quadrants, there are many cities that straddle one of the zero points. These cities, by definition, must be either along the equator or the prime meridian (i.e., have a similar longitude to London).

The map shows 22 cities that are within two and a half degrees of the equator. You can find them by using the grouping function in the lower left corner of the map. Choose “Near Latitude” and then choose the 5 to -10 range. Or, search the map for “0” and choose “0 (Near Latitude).”

Macapá, Brazil; Quito, Ecuador; Padang, Indonesia; Libreville, Gabon; Kampala, Uganda

To get even more specific, we narrowed down to 11 cities that are less than a degree away from Earth’s horizontal midpoint. The closest to the equator is Pontianak in Indonesia, whose city center is within one second (1/60th of a degree) of zero degrees latitude.

Here are all 11 of the places within a degree of the equator:

• Macapá, Brazil
• São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe
• Libreville, Gabon
• Entebbe, Uganda
• Kampala, Uganda
• Pekanbaru, Indonesia
• Quito, Ecuador
• Kismayo, Somalia
• Padang, Indonesia
• Pontianak, Indonesia
• Yaren District, Nauru

Since zero longitude is within densely populated Europe, there are more places that are close to this human-created coordinate. The closest, of course, is London—or Greenwich, specifically. There are 44 cities on the map that are closest to 0 longitude. Yet, there are only a dozen that are less than one degree from zero.

Greenwich, England; Accra, Ghana; Valencia, Spain; Bordeaux, France; Le Havre, France

Here are all 12 places within a degree of the prime meridian:

• Accra, Ghana
• Tamale, Ghana
• Zaragoza, Spain
• Valencia, Spain
• Lleida, Spain
• Bordeaux, France
• Brighton and Hove, England
• London, England
• Greenwich, England
• Le Havre, France
• Cambridge, England
• Peterborough, England

A much less populated place? The opposite of the prime meridian. At either 180 or -180 (it’s the same place), you’ll find just two places. One is far north and another in the south: Rabi Island, Fiji; Anadyr, Russia. Move the map around and see if you can find them!

Famous Cities and Their Coordinate Partners

Ah, Paris. The City of Lights. A place for lovers. Yes, Paris seems like a magical place. Yet, it is on the same latitude as Seattle, a place best known for… rain. While Seattle is slightly rainier than Paris, it’s not by much. Similarly, London gets a bad rap and it’s only a few degrees north of Paris.

Surely New York City has a similar reality distortion field, causing it to appear better than other places of similar latitude? At 40 degrees North of the equator, the snowy-wintered New York is at a similar longitude to… Portugal, Spain, and the rest of the beautiful Mediterranean. To be fair, Sendai, Japan, is also around 40 degrees latitude, and it has nearly freezing temperatures in January.

Longitudinally, New York is around the same at 73 degrees West as most of the country of Chile. Interestingly, South America is almost entirely east of the United States. The time zones range from UTC -05:00 (same as Eastern time) to UTC -02:00.

Speaking of South America, São Paulo, the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, is 22 degrees South of the equator. That puts it similar to Johannesburg (the capital of South Africa) and Brisbane (the third-largest city in Australia). On the longitude scale, much of Brazil has no countries North or South of it. Seriously, check the map! The only non-Brazilian place at 50 degrees West is the tiny and remote Qaqortoq, Greenland.

The Far North and South

Locations in the North and South are best known for their extremes. The poles are each covered in snow year round, so expect cold temperatures in these cities to the far North and South.

The Northernmost city in the world is Alert, Nunavut, Canada, at more than 82 degrees North. That puts Alert just 550 miles (885 km) from the North Pole. In Europe, Norway’s Ny-Ålesund is over 78 degrees above the equator. And Alaska is home to the northernmost U.S. city of Barrow, at 71 degrees latitude.

The Southernmost city in the world is Puerto Williams, Chile, and it’s nearly 10 degrees farther south than any other continent’s southern city. At 54 degrees below the equator, it may not seem as far south as you expect. However, Antarctica reaches out to about 60 degrees latitude, so there’s not much room for inhabited cities much closer.

Other far-Southern cities include Invercargill, New Zealand (46 degrees South) and Cape Town, South Africa (at -33 degrees latitude).