The Greatest
World Cup Ever Played

France actually led all teams in goals scored with 16, narrowly ahead of Argentina's 15. Both finalists combined for 31 of the tournament's 172 goals — 18% between two sides. Croatia's 3rd-place run produced 8 goals, a testament to their efficiency and late-match resilience.

The champions were also the most-carded side with 16 yellow cards per fifa:TeamMatchAnalyticsReport — more than any other team. Their defensive core (Acuña, Montiel, Romero, Otamendi) absorbed the bulk. Even Messi picked up a booking. Saudi Arabia were second with 14 cards despite an early exit.

Lusail Stadium hosted 10 matches — the most of any venue — including the final, the semi-final (Argentina vs Croatia), and the quarter-final (Netherlands vs Argentina). Three of those matches hit full capacity at 88,966. Argentina played all three of the best-attended games there.

Across all 64 matches, only 2 direct free-kick goals were scored — Rashford for England (50') and Luis Chávez for Mexico (52'). Both came in the group stage. Weghorst's famous 90+11' goal was a tap-in from a free-kick routine, classified as a penalty goal in the KG.

Morocco became the first African nation to reach the semi-finals, scoring 6 goals — matching Brazil (also 8 in the group + knockouts) while conceding only 4 across 6 matches. Their disciplined defence and organised press stunned Spain, Belgium, and Portugal on their way to the last four.

France scored 16 goals — the tournament's highest by any team — with Mbappé and Giroud combining for 12 of them. Mbappé's hat-trick in the final — including two goals in 97 seconds — remains one of the most extraordinary individual performances in a World Cup final.

The KG stores penalty-shootout goals as full fifa:Goal nodes with period MatchPeriod-11, linked via fifa:hasGoal on the match. A naïve COUNT(?goal) over the event graph therefore yields 198 instead of 172. The 26-goal gap maps exactly to the four penalty shootouts played in Qatar (Netherlands vs Argentina, Croatia vs Japan, Morocco vs Spain, England vs France — 4 shootouts × ~6–7 penalties each).

fifa:PlayerMatchAnalyticsReport and fifa:TeamMatchAnalyticsReport store pre-aggregated, official FIFA stats. Their fifa:goals field counts only in-play goals, matching the official scoreline. Always use analytics reports for aggregate stats — especially goals, yellow cards, and fouls. The match scores (fifa:homeTeamScore / fifa:awayTeamScore) independently confirm the analytics totals.

If you must query the event graph directly, filter out shootout goals with FILTER(?period != fifa:MatchPeriod-11) on fifa:goalPeriod. For yellow cards, use fifa:bookingCard fifa:CardType-1 and be aware that entity label duplicates (e.g. "Alidu SEIDU" vs "Seidu ALIDU") can cause double-counting — always group by player URI, not name string.

The authoritative pattern for top scorers uses
?report a fifa:PlayerMatchAnalyticsReport .
?report fifa:player ?player .
?report fifa:goals ?g .
summed via SUM(xsd:decimal(?g)) — and for team totals, fifa:homeTeamScore + fifa:awayTeamScore over all matches provides a clean cross-check, returning 172 goals across 64 matches exactly.