To win you have to score one more goal than your opponent.
Despite having 211 national associations in the Fifa, the map reveals the domination of Europe and South America in the tournament (in participation, as well as in the world cup winners), those regions with football being among the most popular sports. This inequality in the football worldcup can be explained by having a look at how the qualification process is organised: “For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations’ teams” (see here). The football may be of global significance, but it is far from being a global game. The world map of football looks different than the map of the world.
With 224 Germany scored the most goals of the 2374 total goals scored during the World Cup tournaments, followed by Brazil with 221 and Argentina with 138. Five teams didn’t score any goal during all World Cups. Brazil has the best goal balance (+119), followed by Germany (+103). The worst goal balance has South Korea (-36), Mexico (-35) and Bulgaria (-31).
