Amrabat captures, Modric dribbles, Noppert saves

Andries Noppert’s impressive numbers, Sofyan Amrabat’s recaptures or Louis van Gaal’s record. Remarkable statistics all around this World Cup. We take a closer look at the six most notable.

The World Cup is almost over. The battle for third place will follow on Saturday and the absolute dessert on Sunday: the final between France and Argentina.

The star player of the Argentines, Lionel Messi, can break an impressive record.

Miroslav Klose, Ronaldo (the Brazilian) and Gerd Müller managed to be involved in a total of nineteen goals during World Cups. If Messi scores or provides an assist on Sunday, he will set a new record.

“Sour, but maybe later proud”, Amrabat reacted on Wednesday after the Moroccan loss in the semi-final against France. And be proud, may Amrabat. The defensive midfielder has the most ball recoveries of any World Cup player.

The football fans of course feasted on players like Hakim Ziyech or Azzedine Ounahi. But the engine of the Moroccan team turned out to be Amrabat. The consolation final against Croatia awaits him and his team on Saturday.

One Luka Modric, well known to many football connoisseurs, plays in that Croatian team. The midfielder is 37 years old, but he still frolic happily (and especially a lot) across the field.

With the ball at his feet, Modric has covered by far the most distance of all World Cup players. Only England defender John Stones comes close with 3,229 metres.

Then about the Dutch national team. National coach Louis van Gaal saw his World Cup dream shatter against Argentina: the Orange played a 2-2 draw and was lost on penalties.

Nevertheless, this match will go down in the history books as a draw. That means that the coach is undefeated in all his twelve World Cup matches. Luiz Felipe Scolari, coach of Brazil and Portugal during the World Cup, was the only coach to remain undefeated in twelve games.

Goalkeeper Andries Noppert played an important role in the Dutch result, according to the figures. Anyone who had bet on Noppert as the first goalkeeper of Orange before the tournament would have been lucky. Van Gaal’s top hat rabbit.

On the basis of ‘expected goals’ it can be calculated how many goals against on average a keeper could have expected. At Noppert that was 6.5 this tournament. He only took four.

Based on this statistic, the Tower of Joure among the top three goalkeepers at this World Cup. Only Wojciech Szczesny and Dominik Livakovic submitted better figures.

Referee boss Pierluigi Collina announced before the World Cup that injury time is calculated very carefully. It appeared to be so. In many duels, a lot of injury time was added. Especially the group duel between England and Iran stood out with a total playing time of 117 minutes and 4 seconds.

It benefited the ‘pure playing time’. This World Cup there has been an average of 58 minutes of pure playing time. Compared to previous World Cups an increase of three to five minutes. So more football fun, with two more very beautiful posters on the program.