Interesting Stats Ahead of the 2022 World Cup

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The draw for the group stage of the 2022 World Cup is complete and we know the bulk of the fixtures for the showpiece occasion in Qatar.

This is going to be a different World Cup because it will be played in November and December due to the extreme heat of the summer months in Qatar.

Nonetheless, following the draw, excitement is beginning to build and below you will find some interesting statistics ahead of the tournament.

Qatar will be playing in their first World Cup finals. They qualified as the host nation and it would have found it tough to reach the competition if they had to qualify via the regular route.

If we look at their squad, they have the lowest market value of any country at the 2022 World Cup, regardless of the nations that qualify via the remaining playoffs. Akram Afif is the most expensive player in the Qatar team and he is valued at roughly 4 million euros.

The 25-year-old forward plays for Al-Sadd in his homeland and the whole squad play their club football in Qatar. They are likely to be the only nation in the tournament to have a squad full of players playing in their own country.

The overall value of the Qatar team is approximately 14 million euro, which is a low figure. Therefore, Qatar, despite being the host nation, must be one of the rank outsiders to progress to the knockout stages of the 2022 World Cup.

If we look at the players with the highest market value, Kylian Mbappe alone has a market value of 140 million euro, which is 10 times the amount of the whole Qatari team.

Vinicius Junior and Harry Kane both have a market value of 100 million euro and Neymar has a market value of 90 million euro.

Interestingly, 8 of the 15 highest valued players likely to be playing in the 2022 World Cup will be in the England squad, with Raheem Sterling, Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mason Mount, Declan Rice, and Jude Bellingham all in the top 15.

Moving to goals and the total number of goals scored at the 2018 World Cup was 169. This was 2 goals down from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil but 26 goals more than the 2010 World Cup, held in South Africa.

Following the 1998 World Cup in France, the number of goals continued to fall at each World Cup until the 2014 tournament.

However, it is worth noting the 1998 World Cup saw the group stage expand from 24 teams to 32 and that led to the significant increase in goals from the previous edition in the United States.

The average number of goals scored per game at the 2018 World Cup was 2.6 and this was down from 2.7 in 2014. If you go back to Switzerland in 1954, we saw an average of 5.38 goals per game, which is an extraordinary figure.

Seeded teams only played unseeded teams in the group stage and there were some strange results, something we are never going to see again.

Countries around the world are becoming more competitive and that means we are unlikely to see a repeat of the 9-0, 8-3, 7-0, 7-2, and 6-1 scores of the 1954 World Cup in Qatar.