Facebook introduces World Cup passion index

The ‘Goal!' leaderboard, found on the Sports on Facebook Page, connects fans by allowing them to show their support of a national team.

Developed by Involver, the application has been designed to evoke ‘football passions' in preparation for the tournament, which kicks off on 11 June in South Africa.

Users can ‘like' their favourite teams, publish a news feed story, recommend a team to their friends and invite friends who are not on the social networking site to support a team.

Facebook will track and rank teams based on a 'passion index', which is a measure of a team's total number of 'likes' divided by the internet population of the country it represents.

Chile currently lies top of the leaderboard, with current world champions Italy in 6th place and England in 15th. European champions Spain lie one place ahead of England in 14th place.