No kidding. When it comes to Haiti, it's always a "see it to believe it", approach before getting your hopes up with them. We'll see if these players show up in one months time.
7,138,998 if Wikipedia is to be believed and FIFA counts 100.0% tickets sold. Dallas would have 720,000; Guadalajara 199,400. 68,644 would be the average, so depending on the final stadium config it looks like they'd fall just short. Toronto is the big wildcard, after FIFA's counting system of course.
I presume before the draw on 5 December FIFA will announce how the prize money and club benefits programme will be distributed. The total fund in the FIFA 2023-26 cycle budget is USD$1,007m so it is possible qualification alone could be worth about $10m.
Average goals per game in the preliminary competition to date: UEFA: 3.27 CAF: 2.48 Conmebol: 2.03 So much for European football being the least entertaining!
When you have a team winning 11-1 I it kinda skews the stats and I would not really say it is that entertaining.
Moldova isn't having the greatest qualifying experience, conceding 25 goals in their first five games, 16 of them against Norway.
Good point, but that there are usually more goals scored in Europe compared to the rest of the world is underlined by the fact that the 2024-25 UNL League A had an average of 2.94. This data disproves the often made claim that European national team football is the least entertaining; in fact is the opposite.
Entertaining isn't necessarily the amount of goals scored. To me entertaining is 2 equal teams BOTH playing attacking football, and the match resembling a basketball type back and forth, where goals could come from any attack. You could have a very entertaining 0-0 match. The idea of European football being boring comes from the overly conservative and defensive approach many teams (at least in the past) used to employ. I saw some really good UEFA games this window, but I do remember many games in the past Euro were an utter bore fest. Conmebol despite the low goals per game in your stats tends to be quite exciting because the teams are pretty equal and they like to go at each other for the most part. I've seen exciting and boring games from all Confederations.
That's true, but the consistently high number of goals in European games points towards higher quality football being played and makes the games more attractive to a global audience. There is a correlation between quality and number of goals scored. One other point which is noteworthy - and frequently overlooked - in how attractive national team games look when broadcast globally is the backdrop: European games are usually played on high quality pitches in modern stadiums with usually large attendances and vibrant atmospheres that the viewer can feel. The same often cannot be said for games outside Europe, particularly in Africa and Asia where the backdrop is often terrible featuring many empty stands and the ubiquitous athletics tracks diluting any atmosphere still further; this gives European national team football a significant advantage in attracting a global audience.
Yeah, this is simply not the case now or in recent times. As the Nations League results imply, I suspect that UEFA qualifying matches have quite a high goals-per-game average even if you were to exclude matches between teams that are separated by more than one seeding pot.
Yeah, I remember back in the 1990s when Italy had by far the strongest domestic league (especially late-1990s), many non-British people still preferred the EPL which was ranked around 4th. Part of the reason was probably the more modern stadiums. But also the tempo was higher in England, and that attracted a lot of fans. In general, I would say the tempo in UEFA national team matches is faster than C'BOL, so that could be another factor. Right, but also the defenses in Europe are worse now, I'd say. Even some of the best UEFA teams atm are built like Ferrari at the front but a KIA at the back.
Yes, the zeitgeist of football nowadays is to place the emphasis on attack, Serie A for example is now no different to any other European league in this respect and traditionally it was a more defensive league. These factors have made European football the success story of 21st century sport!
I've driven a KIA for the last 3 years and it hasn't missed a beat. What you've described is ideal, a safe reliable defence and a high performance (although slightly less reliable if you push too hard) offence.
I love games between two teams with 100 points in offense and 0 points in defense in any sport. Those are the most fun to watch lol
FIFA announced that the total fund for the Club Benefits Programme is $355m, so the balance for the national associations which qualify is $652m.
FIFA have officially notified South Africa that the disciplinary committee has opened investigations into their use of an ineligible player in their 2-0 victory over Lesotho. The letter was dated September 15 2025.
Not sure its much of a lifeline. Their main issue is that they are from being one of the top second-place teams, and this turn of events won't help Nigeria's point tally or position on that front. It just keeps them mathematically alive to win the group, but that's still a long shot.
17 points and a mediocre goal difference almost certainly won't be good enough to be one of the best second place teams. So, that Benin x Nigeria match won't be as exciting as it otherwise would have (with a logical format - ridiculous that 2nd place teams don't get another chance)..
Given that FIFA may likely remove the 2 results from the bottom placed team from every group to make things equal with the one 5 team group, Nigerias chances increase. While most teams would lose 6 points they gained from beating teams like Djibouti and Seychelles, Nigeria would only lose 2 points so long as Zimbabwe finishes last which would almost certainly be the case if Lesotho is awarded a 3-0 victory over South Africa.