Number crunching facts as crunch time approaches

Love them or hate them, penalty shoot outs form an integral part of World Cup folklore and it is interesting to note that the nation with the best record in the lottery is Germany with four wins out of four. This is followed by Argentina who have three wins and one loss with Brazil with two victories and one loss.

The worst performing nations are Italy and England with three wins and one loss for the Italians and three losses for England who have never won a shoot out.

The worst performing nation as regards disciplinary records is Argentina who have no less than ten red cards to their name close followed by Brazil with nine and Italy and Cameroon with seven. The average of goals per game has been consistently going down reaching just 2.29 in Germany 2006. Currently the average is slightly lower at 2.26 after 32 matches, no doubt helped to rise by Spain’s massive 7-0 win over North Korea.

Although that game was one of the high scoring of the World Cup, there have been other high scores notably Hungary’s two victories over El Salvador in 1982 which finished 10-1 and their 1954 thumping of South Korea 9-0. Yugoslavia also recorded a 9-0 win over Zaire in 1974.

Incidentally the tournaments with the most penalty shootouts were Italy in 1990 and Germany in 2006 with four, the latter also including the final which was the Italian’s first victory in a shootout against France.