We all know - or at least, everyone other than Ron Smith knows - that football is about a lot more than just numbers and statistics. Games aren't won on paper; they're won on the field, by the players and their managers. But numbers still tell a story of their own, and those stories are quite often interesting in their own right. So I sat down and had a look at the qualifiers for this year's World Cup, and their respective paths to finals glory - and here are the results.

As a guide to the statistics I've used, I counted only preliminary and final qualifying rounds that use a group format. Knockout matches for the final spots in Europe, and the Asia-Oceania and American playoff games have been ignored as a matter of consistency. So Australia for instance played 14 games across their group phases - while Portugal played 10 group games, with their playoff matches ignored.

 

The Winners
The United States of America accumulated the most points of any qualifiers at this year's World Cup, gathering 35 of them through the CONCACAF system. Eleven wins and two draws ensured that the North Americans swaggered through qualifying with the confidence of an old Texan cowboy. That's one point more than Brazil - and the South Americans played two games more.

But it wasn't the Americans who made the most impressive qualifiers. No - while the US may lay claim the most points in total, they played significantly more games than some of the other qualifiers at South Africa 2010 - and it is actually two European teams who can claim ownership to the title of most dominant qualifying campaign. Spain and Netherlands aced their respective UEFA Qualifying groups - both getting through with a 100% winning record; Spain playing ten games for ten wins, and Holland achieving eight from eight. It is no surprise then that both teams go in highly fancied to this tournament.

At the other end of the scale, Uruguay lost as many games as they won, and have made it through to South Africa with the lowest points-per-match total of any of the other qualifiers. Racking up a paltry 1.33 points per game, they succeed in being bigger underachievers than nearest rivals Argentina (1.55 points per game) and North Korea (1.71 points per game). In a country where sixty-six percent of the population are Roman Catholics, I wonder if their qualifying record of 6-6-6 holds any significance?

Putting it in the Net
Get out the umbrella old bean, it's jolly well raining goals for England! Wayne Rooney and co. knocked in 34 goals from ten games during qualifying - making them not just the highest scorers on a per-game basis with 3.4 goals a match, but also the highest scorers overall. Not bad when you consider that some other qualifiers have played nearly double the amount of games that they have.

In equal second overall were Brazil and the United States with 33 goals. The South Americans did their damage over the course of eighteen games, while the Yanks were able to squeeze the same amount of goals from two less matches. Meanwhile, on a per-game basis, Spain and Germany racked up a very healthy 2.8 and 2.6 goals per game respectively; evidently making Europe the place to be for high-scoring encounters (or at least very one-sided matches).

Meanwhile, over in Asia slow and steady was winning the race for North Korea. If by winning you were to mean scraping through to the World Cup having scored only eleven goals in fourteen matches. With a goals-per-game ratio of 0.79, they hold the dubious honour of being the only team to qualify for South Africa having scored less than a goal a game. As a comparison, New Zealand only managed fourteen goals - but they completed this in just six matches. Perplexingly, Argentina were the other ‘grafters' among this years qualifiers. Though they weren't nearly as bad as North Korea, Messi's men struggled to score just 1.27 goals per game throughout qualifying - quite surprising when you consider the attacking talent at their disposal.

Parking the Bus
The Dutch may have a reputation for attacking flair and marauding wing play, but somebody should really point out the fact that they conceded just two goals in their entire eight-game qualifying campaign. While they had the smallest group of any in Europe (all the others had six teams, theirs had just five) they still have the meanest defence of any World Cup qualifier, conceding just 0.25 goals a game.

At the same time that Holland was plugging up any defensive leaks (they're quite good with water, after all) there was another team ensuring that opposition attacks were thwarted at every attempt. The second-meanest defence in world football - at least for the duration of the World Cup qualifiers - was Australia. Yes, the Socceroos evidently took a series of bus-parking lessons from former driver Scott Chipperfield as they made it through fourteen games of qualifying to concede only four goals. Cameroon also conceded just the four throughout their preliminary phase, but they did this across two less games.

So there you go - Pim Verbeek may have come under fire for a gameplan that didn't have the attacking flair of some of his predecessors, but when you examine the numbers, his ‘ugly' Australian team have been nearly unbeatable at the back. Which is something that certainly can't be said for South American qualifiers Chile. While the Chilean side scored at a rate of 1.77 goals a game, they also conceded 1.22 goals a game at the same time - making theirs the most porous of all World Cup defences, both by a measure of the goals per game ratio and in total (22 goals conceded in 18 games). This is only slightly better than Mexico, who managed to leak 18 goals across sixteen games, making for a goals conceded ratio of 1.13 per game.

Taking a World View
Trying to compare teams across federations, or even the qualifying systems themselves, is quite often a fruitless exercise. More often than not, the conversation disintegrates into one country claiming somebody's system is too easy, or that somebody else is robbing them of a well-deserved qualification slot. Personally, these conversations generally end with me slagging off CONCACAF no end. Stupid bloody waste of space that it is...

Anyway. Looking at the numbers I came up with produced some interesting insights into the structure and competitiveness of each FIFA federation involved in qualifying for the world cup. Draw your own conclusions, but here's what I've come up with:

  • The highest-scoring federation (and perhaps therefore the most one-sided?) would have to be UEFA. Looking at the qualifiers from purely a goals-per-game perspective, European teams hold seven of the top ten positions, including the aforementioned England, Spain, and Germany as the top three. The three teams from outside the Old World were Africa's Ivory Coast (fourth with 2.42 goals a game), Oceanic kings New Zealand with (fifth with 14 goals in 6 games) and the CONCACAF champions USA (ninth with 2.06 goals a game). 
  • Meanwhile, if you're looking for the federation with the lowest scoring teams you need look no further than Asia. The AFC tops the charts with the amazing Korea DPR, whose goalless exploits we're already familiar with. But wouldn't you know, every other Asian qualifier makes this perhaps not so sought after top ten. Japan is considered the best of a bad lot, finishing 10th on the list but still only managing 1.64 goals a game - under half of what England averaged. The Socceroos, so solid in defence, still lack a genuine out-and-out striker - and this shows through in their rather poor return of 1.36 goals a game - the 5th lowest strike rate of any World Cup qualifier. Interestingly, three of the remaining six teams in this group of low-scoring sides come from South America; with Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay showing that CONMEBOL isn't just all GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLs after all. 
  • The best defences in the world stereotypically originate in Europe; and to be fair, four of the ten meanest teams are European - including the Dutch, whom we've already talked about. Surprisingly though, good Asian football seems to mean miserly defending - as three of the four Asian teams make the top ten defences in the form of Australia and the two Koreas. The remaining three teams are African - which means that if it's scoreless draws you want to avoid, look no further than the New World, with CONCACAF and CONMEBOL failing to register a single team in the top ten (or indeed, top thirteen!). The best American defence, be it North or South? Brazil. How's that for a stereotype?
  • Given their absence in the top ten defences, it's no surprise that American teams dominate the list of worst defences. Four teams from South America, three from CONCACAF, and three UEFA sides make the list (one being World Handball Champions for 2010, France). So, oddly, while CONMEBOL have some of the lowest scoring teams in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, they also have some of the weakest backlines of any qualifier - Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay are all present. Which above all else indicates just how tight the South American qualification system can be. No 10-0 thrashings here; but no 0-0 draws either.

So, what does this all mean for the World Cup? Well, in all likelihood - probably nothing. Take for instance the two best defences in the world (well, supposedly). Australia and Holland met twice in the past two years; the 2009 encounter reflected their defensive strengths - a nil-all draw. But the three goals scored in the 2008 match bucked the trend, and to top it all off it was Australia who triumphed 2-1. This result, more than any other, shows what the World Cup is capable of producing.

So, while you can take notice of trends and identify strengths and weaknesses among your opponents, when the tournament starts only one thing is for sure - numbers mean absolutely nothing. It's eleven men against eleven men - or sometimes nine, ten, or twelve - and anything can happen. Like Harry Kewell. Or three yellow cards. Or the Juggernaut, bitch.

Still, it will be interesting to see how these figures pan out by the end of the tournament. So... Anyone fancy a bet on the North Koreans scoring, then?