Bore Draws Galore

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is on track to break the all-time record for goalless draws

WITH five stalemates after the opening 32 matches played this tournament, the Qatar World Cup is already in joint-third place on the list of the most 0-0 results in the competition’s history, and the final round of group games haven’t even finished.

The current record stands at seven, with four different tournaments sharing the unwanted honour of having the most games without a goal scored.

The earliest of these four was the 1982 World Cup in Spain.

That competition was unique in a number of ways. It was the first World Cup to feature a penalty shoot-out, and the last tournament to hold two rounds of group stages.

Champions Italy were also the first team to advance beyond the opening round without winning a game, while their goal difference of +6 is still a record low for the World Cup winners.

But despite the seven goalless draws in Spain, there were still a respectable 146 goals scored overall.

This was far more than Italia 90, arguably the most boring World Cup in recent memory - despite holding many magical memories for England fans.

In fact it was so dull it sparked a fundamental rule change. FIFA introduced the back-pass rule in an effort to discourage the timewasting, overly defensive play seen at the 1990 World Cup.

Although the five goalless draws in 1990 was not a record, there were only 115 goals scored, the lowest in any tournament since 1978.

But despite the rule change seeing a rise in total goals scored at more recent tournaments, it did little to prevent the number of goalless bore-draws on display.

In fact, the three tournaments besides 1982 which have each served up the highest number of goalless draws (seven) may come as a surprise.

There were far more goals overall in 2006 (147), 2010 (143), and in 2014 (171). But there were also seven 0-0 draws in each tournament, two more than the 1990 tournament that was so dull it pushed FIFA into changing the laws of the game.

And with barely half of this year’s games played, the 2022 tournament looks more likely than not to break the all-time record.

However, despite featuring an unusually high number of goalless matches so far, the Qatar World Cup has seen more goals per game than the 1990, 2006 and 2010 tournaments, with 81 total goals scored in the 32 matches played at the time of writing.

That’s a goals per game rate of 2.53, more than in the 2002 tournament in South Korea and Japan.

Comparatively, the 1990 tournament saw only 2.21 goals per game, with no World Cup since having a lower tally.

The highest goals per game of any tournament since 1990 was at the following World Cup in the USA in 1994, with 2.71 scored per game, just ahead of Brazil 2014 with 2.70.

Last time out in Russia in 2018 there were 2.6 goals per game, while the total of only one 0-0 draw was the lowest number since 1954.