Rightfully back to the actual thread topic.... In honor of Lloyd announcing her retirement, here's a rundown of Women's World Cup hat trick trivia: ---The first WWC hat trick was scored for ITA against TPE by legend Carolina Morace, who remains among ITA's most-capped and highest-scoring players despite retiring 24 years ago. ITA then got their second hat trick in the return to the WWC two years ago, scored against JAM by Christiana Girelli ---Two hat tricks have been scored in the same game on four occasions: BRAvMEX'99, GERvARG'07, GERvCIV'15, and SUIvECU'15; in none of those cases did the losing team get one of the two hat tricks. ---Hinted at with the previous stat: expanded tournaments often show a significant uptick in hat tricks as fringe teams get plowed over by top-rated teams, usually in the group stage. By the numbers, hat tricks per year with expansion years in bold underline: 3 - 2 - 4 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 6 - 4 . On that alone, I'd bet on at least 7 hat tricks in 2023! ---((Not trivia, but with the previous two points combined, I'm highly interested in seeing if ZAM qualifies for 2023 and pulls off some of the same magic seen in Tokyo this past month)) ---If you noticed the "usually" in the previous trivia note, it's because the inaugural tournament is the only one so far to see multiple hat tricks in the knockout stage. In fact, there have only been three knockout stage hat tricks in the history of the tournament - and all were scored by the USA (Akers '91 QFs, Jennings '91 SFs, Lloyd '15 F). ---GER and JPN are the only two teams to have hat tricks both for and against them, and for both teams, the only hat trick against them was in the knockouts against the USA. ---All in all, 10 nations have scored hat tricks at the World Cup, with GER holding the most at 5 total, while 12 nations have had a hat trick against them, with MEX holding the most at 4. ---A player has scored four or more goals in a match on three occasions: 5 by Akers (USA) against TPE in '91, 5 by Morgan (USA) against THA in '19, and 4 by Kerr (AUS) against JAM in '19 ---Rozeira's hat trick for BRA against JAM in '19 is the only occasion where a hat trick constituted all goals scored for a team (or for either team). Instances that came close were Sawa (JPN) against MEX in '11 (4-0 final score) and Kerr (AUS) against JAM in '19 (4-1 final score).
Also, we can now update this list! 19 - USA, NED, SWE, ENG 21 - CAN, SWE, USA, AUS It's the first occasion where the holdover from one tournament to the next was 2 teams, less than the usual 3 but more than the 1 we saw for the first time last cycle. It's also the second time than an odd-team-out won one of the tournaments, and it adds CAN to the very short list of teams to ever win a major trophy (now at five: USA, NOR, GER, JPN, CAN)
With several confederations having started qualifying matches this past window, let's play with some qualifying trivia! 44 teams attempted to qualify for the first WWC; for each of the next five cycles, 20-30 teams attempted qualifying for the first time, but for the past three cycles, only 10 +/- 1 teams have attempted to join the party. Four teams have averaged over 2.7 PPG in the eight previous qualification cycles (i.e. not counting any matches played this past month): USA, BRA, GER, and NGA. These four teams have a grand total of 5 draws and 8 losses out of 184 qualifying matches between them. Of those four nations, their "upsets" and draws have almost all been more recent than not, with three of the four countries seeing the majority of their hiccups coming since the 2011 cycle: GER 0-0 HUN, 1990, UEFA class A group match GER 0-1 NED, 1997, UEFA class A group match GER 2-3 NOR, 1998, UEFA class A group match GER 1-1 UKR, 1998, UEFA class A playoff NGA 0-1 GHA, 2002, CAF first phase group match BRA 0-2 ARG, 2006, C'BOL final round final group match USA 0-1 MEX, 2010, C'CAF semifinal BRA 0-2 ARG, 2014, C'BOL first phase group match BRA 0-0 COL, 2014, C'BOL final round final group match GER 2-3 ISL, 2017, UEFA group match NGA 0-1 RSA, 2018, CAF first phase group match NGA 0-0 CMR, 2018, CAF semifinal NGA 0-0 RSA, 2018, CAF final What might be surprising is that neither USA nor GER actually have the highest total points in the respective confederations! It somewhat makes sense when you remember that both nations have hosted a WWC, and thus only participated in 7 of the 8 qualifying campaigns. As such, NOR has 175pts to GER's 170pts. It's a bit more interesting in CONCACAF, as USA is not surpassed by CAN (who also skipped a qualification cycle by hosting once) but by TRI! At least by the table on Wikipedia, which I've realized isn't actually sourced to anything... I question the person who made it and what exactly they count as qualifying matches, because I'd want to make sure they're consistent across all confederations. I could look at stats for qualification futility as well, but there are several ways to quantify that, and I'm not sure I trust the lower end of this table so well. However, higher up the table, we can look at most games played/most points earned/highest PPG without ever qualifying for a WWC. These three records (and runners-up) belong to HUN (BEL), ISL (TRI), and JOR (HAI), respectively. And one last tidbit: once a team has qualified for its second WWC, it's highly likely to never miss again, partially thanks to the rapid expansion the tournament has seen recently. This is true for 14 of the nations that qualified twice by 2015, and false for 7. There are some technicalities in that second ground; CHN is technically there due to a shock miss in 2011, which is the only tournament out of 8 they've failed to qualify for, so IMO they're effectively more in the first group, and DPK is in the second group having been outright banned for two of the three tournaments since their last (and fourth) successful qualification, so they've also only "failed to qualify" once since their second. Three nations qualified for the second time in 2019, (NED, ESP, and THA,) so to-be-determined on if they follow this pattern or not - though I'd wager all three are near locks for 2023.
On the Wiki side New Zealand is listed with 2.265 points per game but they have 2.625 PPG (84 points from 32 games) and are the team closest to 2.7 PPG. They still need eight wins to reach the 2.7 mark and as host of next WC they should have to wait until the qualifying for 2031 for it (if FIFA doesn`t have a WWC every 2 years until then).
According to it TRI have 55 played matches while Mexico that have not hosted WWC still only have 41. But IIRC the first stage of WWC qualification in CONCACAF is in the Zones (Sub-confederations) and since North American Zone (NAFU) have three spots for the final rounds and only three members USA,Canada and Mexico do not play in that stage while the teams from Central American Zone (UNCAF) and Caribbean Zone (CFU) do.
Yeah, there are matches most CFU and UNCAF teams must play to get into the C'CAF championship. My point with that paragraph (specifically the last sentence) was less "where are the extra matches coming from?" and more "are extra matches like these treated equally across confederations in this table?". It's nuance, but important - qualification matches like these happen in AFC, CAF, and OFC as well, and while they can eliminate teams from WWC contention, they're not officially considered WWC qualifying matches; they're instead considered continental championship qualifying matches, which are weighted differently by FIFA.
Eye-opening 19-0 scoreline in UEFA qualifying today - but it's not a record-breaking scoreline! (Or, at least, not record-breaking outside UEFA.) Without looking it up first, who wants to guess: -the current record scoreline in a qualifying match? -the four times said record has happened? -what else all four of those occurrences have in common?
Isn't it the British Virgin Islands? But I had to confirm it, but they lost against Cuba 21-0 in Olympic qualifying in 2008.
I think the record score likely happened in Oceania or Asia. I remember a 21:0 from a Oceania game (either Australia or New Zealand). So I guess 21:0 for the highest score. The Pacific Islands have been weaker in the Nineties so that I would guess qualifiers for 1995 and 1999. What have the occurrences in common? Maybe the games were all played in the same country (New Zealand).
Was Olympic Games and World Cup qualifying decided in the same tournament? I thought CONCACAF has an extra qualification tournament for the Olympic Games.
Yup, those are two! The other two are: Japan 21 - Guam 0, 1997 AFC Women's Championship Canada 21 - Puerto Rico 0, 1998 CONCACAF Women's Championship All four of these 21-0 matches came in the 1999 qualifying cycle!
Since my first answer to question three (same country) was not correct: All four of these occurrences have in common that the loser of these games played their first international game ever.
Ha! I didn't have that info handy when I first asked; fun catch! Interesting that so many nations had their first international match in the same cycle - and all in regional finals to boot!
So we hold the record fort highest qualifying win in both men's and women's world cups (although shared in the Women's game). I think that says more about OFC than it does about us.
If it really was the record in UEFA qualifying, it sure didn't last for too much long: England-Latvia 20-0 today.
Dang, England must've been slacking, just one away from tying the overall record and they couldn't do it? Geez...
As it always happen in football, we can blame it on the referee: @Lohmann claims that she only gave 3 minutes of additional time in a game that was stopped, at the very least, for 20 goals and 6 substitutions!
England has already scored 53 goals in six qualifiers and still four games to play including Luxembourg and North Macedonia. What is the record for most goals scored?
Well, what's your frame of reference? Total goals in all historical qualifiers? They're sill over 50 goals behind Germany in that respect. Total goals in a single qualifying campaign? There's little meaning to that since the number of games per campaign can vary a lot, even in a single confederation. I would, though, be curious to see what the single-campaign goals-per-game record is, as that's more-ish normalized... England are currently making a good run at that record, but that record is probably held by a nation in a different confederation where a blowout among fewer total matches can skew things a bit more. Might be Australia in the 1999 campaign with 49F/1A in just 4 games (over 12 goals per game). England currently have 53F/0A in 6 games (slightly under 9 goals per game).
I meant total goals in a single qualifying campaign. The highest number I know is 62 (in 10 games) from Germany in qualifiers for the World Cup 2015. Of course this is influenced by the number of games and the qualification system. We had a preliminary round in 2015 for UEFA so that Germany didn`t play against minnows. Algeria have a 14:0 against Sudan in this qualifying campaign. If they withdraw now they have the record of goals per game which shows that this is isn`t necessary a more meaningful statistics.
To be fair, when doing averages, most people also stipulate a minimum number for whatever the denominator is, such as minimum minutes for comparing GAA for 'keepers in a league. On that note, one single game certainly wouldn't make the cut for comparing qualifying campaign goals-per-game. X-D Especially since the CAF qualifying cycle is far from over, so passing judgement on any of those nations yet isn't great practice either. As I said earlier, averages are more-ish normalized... The "ish" was there intentionally for this kind of situation. Averages are almost always better than raw values, so long as you're using your statistical practices judiciously.
Was browsing through the men's version of this thread, and got me wondering: have any women's sides gone undefeated in a qualifying campaign but still failed to qualify for the world cup? For this question, I do want to be a bit more stringent about what a "campaign" counts as, because I think it missed the spirit of the question to be eliminated based on one lone game or on just a single home-and-away series, so I thought it might be better to consider "played against at least two different opponents" or "played at least three matches" as the definition of a "campaign". Thankfully, the very first case I could find of an undefeated campaign failing wasn't a lone game or a single home-and-away, so that worry was a bit unfounded. That said, it only counts as a "campaign" for one of the two proposed definitions: ECU had a win against VEN and a draw against COL in the first round of the 2003 Sudamerica Fememino, but didn't advance to the second round (COL did). ECU played two different opponents, but did not play at least three matches. The next one I found was TPE when attempting to qualify for the 2014 Asian Cup - two wins and one draw in the qualification group, but MYA advanced to the final tournament ahead of them. EQG also went undefeated that cycle, but they only played a single home-and-away series against CIV in trying to reach the 2014 African championship - it's only one of two instances I've found that fail both of the suggested "campaign" definitions. Karma came for CIV, though, as they had four consecutive draws in the two home-and-away series attempting to get to the 2018 African championship; they got past MAR in the first round (who are the second case to fail both definitions) but lost out to MLI in the second round. LVA were eliminated in UEFA's preliminary round as well that cycle. It was a bloodbath in CFU during that same cycle, as THREE teams went undefeated in CFU groups but failed to make the final C'CAF championship: PUR, HAI, and SKN, who were passed by CUB, JAM, and TRI respectively. Lastly (I think) is the most infamous case of an undefeated team not qualifying, when DPK were drawn into the same group as KOR in trying to reach the 2018 Asian Cup. Both teams went 4-1-0 with the South knocking the North out on GD. So to answer my original question: yes, it's happened several times before, though never in a final round of qualification, and the longest such failed campaigns were four matches long (usually in five-team groups, but one was a two-round home-and-away campaign).
In the spirit of finding random little trivia, I want to share a few quick little related things I just noticed: --SWE has more medals than GER, 4 to 3, with SWE going 3/3 in bronze medal matches while GER is 0/2 for the bronze --In fact, aside from the USA, no past champions have ever won any bronze medals matches they've played (GER 0/2, NOR 0/2, JPN 0/0, vs both USA and non-champs SWE being 3/3 each) --this leaves ENG as the only team to have both won and lost a bronze medal match