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The World Cup, Harvard, Portuguese banking, Chinese property investing, email embarrassment, tech giants, and the pope: the most-read views of 2014 are an eclectic bunch. Following, in descending order, are the 10 articles with the highest readership on Breakingviews.com:

German soccer glory was predictable – with luck

Harvard could get smarter about its endowment

Banco Espirito Santo could lure periphery bulls

How China is stoking London’s housing bubble

Time for Sheryl Sandberg to lean out of Facebook

Morgan Stanley email shame begs a tech solution

Alibaba triangular dealmaking adds to IPO quirks

Chinese real estate is in real trouble

Six steps to Alibaba’s twelve-figure valuation

Pope’s “authentic” economics make sense

Three caveats. First, this is a snapshot not a scientific study: the data does not include Eikon and other Thomson Reuters platforms, or readership via syndication.

Second, the list excludes Reuters columns by our writers. The most-read of these was by Hugo Dixon: Independent Scotland won’t keep the pound

Third, the list is skewed because most of our content is subscription-only, but free pieces naturally attract more readers. The most-read piece behind the paywall was on fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading: Europe’s big bond traders lose out to Wall Street