The 32-team World Cup era is over. Some really basic numbers that I found vaguely interesting / are decent quiz content for your mates:

Most games:
1. 🇧🇷 41
2. 🇫🇷🇩🇪 39
4. 🇦🇷 36
5 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 33
6. 🇭🇷🇳🇱🇪🇸 30
9. 🇲🇽🇰🇷 27
11. 🇵🇹 26
12. 🇯🇵 25
13. 🇺🇸 23
14. 🇧🇪🇮🇹🇺🇾 22
17. 🇩🇰🇨🇭 19
19. 🇦🇺🇨🇷🇳🇬 17 Most wins (incl. ET & pens):

1. 🇧🇷 29
2. 🇩🇪 27
3. 🇦🇷🇫🇷 25
5. 🇳🇱 20
6. 🇭🇷🇪🇸 17
8. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 15
9. 🇧🇪🇵🇹 12
11. 🇮🇹🇺🇾 11
13. 🇲🇽 10
14. 🇰🇷🇨🇭 8
16. 🇨🇴🇯🇵 7
18. 🇩🇰 6
19. 🇨🇷🇪🇨🇬🇭🇲🇦🇵🇾🇸🇳🇸🇪🇺🇸 5

While there's little disputing that Liverpool are worthy title winners, I believed that they were a better team in 18/19. That led me down a rabbit hole, which ended up in ranking Liverpool's 69 league performances across both seasons. And, I think, just about proved me right 👇🏽 I looked at two metrics to create an index of performances:

Match goal difference
Match xG difference

And adjusted it based on the quality and form of the opponent (per @21stClub model) & whether it was home or away. I somewhat arbitrarily weighted them 2:1.

Ten years, ago, FIFA began revealing the votes behind its Ballon D'or / Best awards. In that time, Messi and Ronaldo have dominated; I've taken a look at their rivalry through the prism of voting patterns. Thread! Firstly, a quick one on how the voting works. Each country has three voters - the national coach, captain, and a media representative. They each submit their top three players for that year. (As we've seen with Egypt this year - not everyone remembers to do this or does it right)

I’ve seen that UEFA are looking to scrap the away goals rule. I think this is a bad idea; despite being a bit of an anachronism, it makes two-legged knockout football more interesting. Here’s why! (thread – all stats for the Champions League since 2003) First, let’s reject the idea that the AGR encourages goalless first legs. First legs in the knockout stages have been 0-0 draws 10% of the time. This is the same rate of 0-0s as in group matches between teams who finish 1st and 2nd in their groups (9.6%).