Random World Cup Facts

Discussion in 'Women's World Cup' started by SiberianThunderT, May 23, 2021.

  1. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Snagging this thread idea from the men's forums: a place for people to collect, share, and quiz over whatever women's world cup trivia. The thread over the the men's forum gets new bits of trivia posted every month or so, just whenever anyone finds something interesting in old data to mention!

    I'll start with some of the most top-level "empirical facts" of the women's world cup:

    1. Every World Cup winner (women's or men's) was coached by a citizen of the winning nation
    2. USA has always medalled
    3. There has never been a repeat silver medalist
    4. Every host (or planned host) has been eliminated in the QFs, never before or after, except when in conflict with (2)

    As a consequence of (2), USA has played the maximum number of world cup games possible. USA has also never lost their final game of any tournament (counting PK-decided matches as draws).

    As a consequence [or extension?] of (4), only USA and Norway have won women's world cups in their home confederation. AFC's record is particularly striking here, as AFC nations have reached the SFs on four occasions, but never in an AFC-hosted tournament.

    And here's one of the more obscure little factoids I've found so far:
    The losing team from the most lopsided score in each tournament actually has a very good record of qualifying for the following tournament!
    1991 - SWE 8-0 JPN
    1995 - NOR 8-0 NGA
    1999 - CHN 7-0 GHA
    2003 - RUS, KOR, and ARG all had -6 matches, and ARG qualified for 2007. However...
    2007 - ***GER 11-0 ARG*** (COL took C'BOL's second spot in 2011)
    2011 - CAN & MEX both had -4 matches, and both made the expanded 2015 tournament
    2015 - ***GER 10-0 CIV***
    2019 - USA 13-0 THA?? to be determined, but likely
    ...in fact, it looks like a loss to GER is the kiss of death in these situations, as that was the case for RUS in 2003 as well as ARG in 2007 and CIV in 2015.
     
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  2. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #2 soccernutter, May 23, 2021
    Last edited: May 23, 2021
    Or the first official World Cup (host China met the US in the final). Unless you are saying that is the conflict.

    Edit - Never mind. I always think 1999 was a rematch of 1991.
     
  3. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    The Norway erasure is real :ROFLMAO:
     
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  4. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    #4 SiberianThunderT, May 23, 2021
    Last edited: May 23, 2021
    One interesting thing about FIFA WoSo is that continental championship tournament usually function as World Cup qualifying as well, with the only exception being UEFA. This means that, unlike with the men, there has never been a continental champion missing from the women's World Cup. On a similar note, no nation that placed in the top 4 of one WC tournament failed to qualify for the next tournament.

    The closest thing that the women's WC has with "surprise qualification failures" would be looking at the FIFA rankings and seeing if anyone from the top ten is missing. The rankings didn't even exist until after the 2003 WC, so here's what played out since then:
    2007 - FRA (7th)
    2011 - none (highest missing was ITA, 12th, and DEN, 13th)
    2015 - none (highest missing was NOR, 11th, and NED, 12th)
    2019 - none (highest missing was DPK, 11th)
    As an honorable mention, China is the only team to fail to qualify for a tournament after having a streak of 5 or more tournaments, qualifying for the first 5 WCs before missing out in 2011. Then, DPK failed to qualify in 2015 after a streak of 4 tournaments, but that was due to a ban, so IDK how that counts exactly; multiple nations have had streaks of three and then missed on a potential 4th.

    That said, the fact that the Africa Women's Cup of Nations is played every other year instead of every 4 years also has produced an interesting "qualification failure" story with South Africa. Here's South Africa's Cup record, along with what it meant for qualification:
    2006 - 3rd place, top 2 qualify
    2008 - 2nd place
    2010 - 3rd place, top 2 qualify
    2012 - 2nd place
    2014 - 4th place, top 3 qualify
    2016 - 4th place
    2018 - 2nd place, top 3 qualify, finally a success!
    As far as I can tell, this is the only instance (outside of OFC) where a perennial runner-up spent several cycles without actually qualifying, especially with that miss on the 2015 expansion.
     
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  5. Bauser

    Bauser Member+

    Dec 23, 2000
    Norway
    Club:
    Fredrikstad FK
    May be I missed something, but both NOR and NED qualified for 2015.
     
  6. lil_one

    lil_one Member+

    Nov 26, 2013
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yep, and in fact, Norway is one of the countries that has qualified for every WWC so far, the other countries being Brazil, Germany, United States, Japan, Nigeria, and Sweden. As mentioned, the highest team missing in 2015 was North Korea (ranked 8th at the time). That was the WWC they were banned from after testing positive for drugs during the 2011 WWC, so not really a failure to qualify. If we don't count North Korea, then the highest team missing in 2015 was 13th-ranked Italy followed by Denmark (15th)....same 2 that missed in 2011.

    Another random fact: OFC is the only confederation never to have a team reach the knockout rounds. (Australia only reached the knockouts after moving to the AFC.)
     
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  7. lil_one

    lil_one Member+

    Nov 26, 2013
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It was a rematch of sorts, but a more recent match: of the 1996 Olympic gold medal game.

    (Additional sidenote: China also just felt like a good matchup. The US had met China 3 times in friendlies in 1999: the US lost 2 and won 1 of those games (all in close 1-2 or 2-1 games). You may have heard this story, but one of those losses was the Algarve final, a game in which Chastain missed a penalty kick. And, well, we know what happened in the final.)
     
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  8. blissett

    blissett Member+

    Aug 20, 2011
    Italy
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    I don't have the time right know to further investigate the subject (full end of school-year craziness for my teacher's job these days! :x3:), but, since this idea comes from the men's forum, I wonder if could there be any interesting "aggregate" piece of trivia, involving both men's and women's NTs, on the model of #1 posted by @SiberianThunderT (Every World Cup winner (women's or men's) was coached by a citizen of the winning nation).

    For instance, considering Men's WC and Women's WC on the following year as an unique cycle (since normally WWC happens just one year after MWC), one could look at overlaps: how many NTs managed to qualify for both MWC and WWC in the same cycle, since WWC exists? (And, of course, this is made more difficult by the fact that WWC always has less teams than MWC, much less if you consider the first editions!).

    This piece of trivia came to my mind because of the particular situation that recently happened in Italy: Italian Men's NT didn't qualify for Russia 2018, the first time after 60 years that Italy wasn't qualifying for a World Cup. Meanwhile Italian Women's NT qualified for France 2019, the first time they managed to do that in the last 20 years.
    I could observe, by looking at what was happening around me in my country, that Italy's performance at France 2019 (when they reached quarter finals) gained even more resonance because of the fact that the men's team hadn't qualified in the same cycle. Thus my interest for this particular piece of stats. :)
     
  9. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    ...yeah, in fact NOR is one of the always-qualifiers, so IDK what I was looking at last night. o_O

    The Norway erasure is *very* real, apparently. :speechless:
     
  10. lil_one

    lil_one Member+

    Nov 26, 2013
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #10 lil_one, May 24, 2021
    Last edited: May 24, 2021
    Without looking at it yet, I'd guess it would actually be a pretty fair number. Most of the countries that invest in woso are doing so because they already invest in the men's team.

    I do know that Germany and Brazil are the only two countries to qualify for every men's and women's World Cup since the creation of the Women's World Cup (and Brazil has never failed to qualify for any men's or women's WC; Germany didn't enter 1930 and was banned in 1950). I know this factoid because the US also was on the list until, alas, 2018 happened.
     
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  11. lil_one

    lil_one Member+

    Nov 26, 2013
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Okay, now having looked at the data, for each WWC's total qualified teams, roughly half of the countries had a team in the previous year's MWC.

    1990/1991: Germany, Italy, Sweden, USA, Brazil (so 5 out of 12 WWC teams had a men's team at the MWC)

    1994/1995: Nigeria, USA, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Sweden (6 of 12)

    1998/1999: Nigeria, Mexico, USA, Japan, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Italy (9 of 16)

    2002/2003: Nigeria, USA, China, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden (11 of 16)

    2006/2007: Ghana, Australia, Japan, USA, Sweden, Germany, England, Argentina, Brazil (9 of 16)

    2010/2011: Australia, Japan, North Korea, Nigeria, Mexico, USA, Brazil, New Zealand, England, France, Germany (11 of 16)

    2014/2015: Australia, Japan, South Korea, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Costa Rica, Mexico, USA, Brazil, colombia, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland (18 of 24; a full 75%!)

    2018/2019: Australia, Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden (11 of 24)
     
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  12. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    #12 SiberianThunderT, Jun 13, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2021
    Some things that crossed my mind this weekend, as we approach the Olympics this summer:

    1. Obvious empirical fact - no WNT has ever followed up a WWC win with an OG win
    1b. On only two occasions has an OG champ won the following WWC three years later (both times being USA)
    2. Despite that, from the 95/96 cycle to the 11/12 cycle, there have always been three teams shared between the top four of each tournament; this pattern was quite strongly broken in the 15/16 cycle:
    2b. None of those earlier cycles saw the odd-teams-out win either tournament:

    95 - NOR, GER, USA, CHN
    96 - USA, CHN, NOR, BRA

    99 - USA, CHN, BRA, NOR
    00 - NOR, USA, GER, BRA (not a lot of variety yet... 5 teams make up the 16 spots thus far)

    03 - GER, SWE, USA, CAN
    04 - USA, BRA, GER, SWE

    07 - GER, BRA, USA, NOR
    08 - USA, BRA, GER, JPN

    11 - JPN, USA, SWE, FRA
    12 - USA, JPN, CAN, FRA

    15 - USA, JPN, ENG, GER
    16 - GER, SWE, CAN, BRA

    TBD how 21 compares to 19!
     
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  13. West Ender

    West Ender Member

    Dec 28, 2020
    Southwest
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Well, if the USWNT win OG this year, there will be a huge asterisk next to that statistic IMO, because of the extra year in between.
     
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  14. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    #14 SiberianThunderT, Jun 13, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2021
    Eh, I would say a small asterisk, if any. I don't buy the argument that the lack of time between tournaments factors into the lack of "double" winners, whether it be mindset or fitness or some other reason. If that were the case, the 15/16 cycle should be the "norm" in terms of team turnover in the top four, and yet the actual pattern is that high performance remains from a WWC year to an OG year. I think the real issue is just that top teams are good at checking each other - of the 12 tournaments, (heck, even of the 14 if including 1991 and 2019,) only one was not won by USA, NOR, or GER.
     
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  15. blissett

    blissett Member+

    Aug 20, 2011
    Italy
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    Looking at that, Japan's achievement looks even more astonishing.
     
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  16. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    Even moreso consindering NOR hasn't made a top four since 2007!

    And, of course, this upcoming OG will be interesting since neither GER nor NOR even qualified. If neither USA nor JPN win this summer, (either USA failing by the pattern or JPN failing because there are six other higher-ranked teams vying,) we'd get an entirely new title-winning team.
     
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  17. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
  18. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
  19. soccernutter

    soccernutter Moderator
    Staff Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    Aug 22, 2001
    Near the mountains.
    Club:
    Tottenham Hotspur FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Norway erasure?
     
  20. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
    Erasure of corruption, too...

    World Cup rigging is not a joke, and the facts of it are sadly relevant to the topic. Far from corruption being a thing of the past, three women's Fifa tournaments in 6 years have had major rule changes that either advantaged U.S. Soccer directly or came from lobbying by its members and coaches. (Fifa desperate to promote the sport in the U.S., of course.) It's hard to draw any other conclusion. I know the subject isn't a pleasant one.
     
  21. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
    Or if you want that in the form of a statistic:

    24-team World Cup format (2015 & 2019)
    Seeded teams vs non-group winners in quarterfinals:
    2015 - USA (won), Canada (lost), Japan (won)
    2019 [randomly drawn] - England (won), Germany (lost)

    So in summary, special privileges are only useful if the team can actually win. :rolleyes:
     
  22. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    #22 SiberianThunderT, Jul 24, 2021
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2021
    The lobbying for the current Olympics, maybe, but USSF had no direct input on the pre-placement of seeded teams in 2015. It's not fair to blame the US for FIFA's corporate greed. As for your third case, IDK if you're referring to the addition of a fourth extra time sub in 2016 or of VAR in 2019, but the latter doesn't favor the US or any single team over anyone else and the former is a marginal advantage, if any, and neither (to my knowledge) were directly lobbied for by the US. Even the expanded rosters this year were clearly being discussed far in advance with other teams advocating for it louder than the US did.

    Also your statistic is entirely opaque, it's basically 50/50 and proves nothing.

    Is FIFA (and the IOC) tilting the field in the hopes of making more money? Maybe, but the effect of their efforts is apparently minor, if there at all. Is the US "meddling" in FIFA's (and IOC's) decisions? No more than any other country, i.e basically zero until this weird Olympic year. Not to mention that, even if you want to consider 2015 an issue, that's just one out of USA's eight World Cup medals, and the original statistic you tried to pun off wasn't even talking about the Olympics (which USA has not always medalled in). So get out with that.
     
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  23. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
    No, I get it, you want the tournaments to be run fairly, equitably. They aren't. It's happening in plain sight. Fifa openly admitted to an unfair system in 2015 (it's a fact, unfortunately), a plot to help Canada and the U.S., in weird circumstances, so they would get more fans in(???). To exclude any benefiting party from blame is silly, frankly. That World Cup setup was never repeated for anyone else. France didn't have this luxury as host in 2019 - indeed, France lost out the most from it, being beaten in two successive quarterfinals by difficult (seeded) opponents in 2015 and 2019. Germany had a right to be aggrieved in 2015 as well, iirc...

    You don't know what I mean, but you disagree anyway :)

    In fact, the fact is, Fifa got this bright idea from...

    "US women’s coach says her players have an equal right to VAR" - (Jul 2018)
    "USWNT's Jill Ellis, Megan Rapinoe Call for VAR at Women's World Cup" - (Sep 2018)

    Without that, probably no VAR in 2019, and the predictable mess would have been avoided.

    For the record, I don't think the USWNT's idea was "Let's ruin a tournament!", but rather, "More referees, it ought to help us". Maybe not a dishonest motive, but totally naive about the consequences for women's soccer. This year's Olympics made it clear that rule changes are just another tactic that they use in trying to win, even if it disrupts teams' plans weeks before the kickoff - although Fifa's amateurishness is ultimately its own fault. (The IOC/NBC moving the final by several hours because of that one team is a different issue, but emblematic of a similar problem.) U.S. Soccer has too much influence for one country.
     
  24. SiberianThunderT

    Sep 21, 2008
    DC
    Club:
    Saint Louis Athletica
    Nat'l Team:
    Spain
    #24 SiberianThunderT, Aug 10, 2021
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2021
    Wow, you really like waiting 3+ weeks to come back and dig further off-topic, don't you? Okay.

    You seem to be under the impression I'm denying the intent behind the pre-placement. I never said any such thing. My issue with your original misplaced quip is this:
    This is a MASSIVELY ridiculous take. You want to place blame on any party A if they benefit from party B's action, even if there's no evidence that party A tried to influence party B's decision at all? Sure, then let's blame kids for bad decision their parents make in the name of providing a better life. Blame is all about intent, or at least a disregard in actions taken. If a "beneficiary" has no intent at all or did not take the action, then their benefit is not of their doing, and placing blame on them for it is what's silly, frankly.
    (Now, are there some situations where a benefited party can be given responsibility to fix the result, regardless of how responsible they were for the original action? Sure. But that's a different issue than assigning blame.)
    There were two possibilities for what you meant and I disagreed with both of them. Not that hard of an argument to make.

    I think you're just obsessed with blaming the US for whatever you can. After the introduction of VAR at the 2018 men's World Cup, which was largely viewed as successful, fans and teams everywhere wanted to see it implemented at the 2019 women's World Cup. The fact that a few highly visible US individuals were among the chorus is not in any way evidence that they were the main reason it happened. In fact, it wasn't until March of 2019 (well after the two articles you posted) that FIFA decided to go forth with VAR for 2019; if US Soccer had "too much influence" as you claim, it wouldn't have taken nearly a year of pressure from parties around the world to make it happen.
     
  25. sbahnhof

    sbahnhof Member+

    Nov 21, 2016
    Aotearoa
    You misinterpreted a lot of what I said, which didn't claim some of the things you thought it did. I'm baffled that talking to you about this would be so polarizing - mostly I was trying to get to the bottom of a general trend that is worrying. I'll leave it at that. Thanks for your time.
     

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