World Cup 2018: First Round Statto

Now that the first round is done and dusted, and we're through 75% of the tournament (sob), we know who's going to face off in the knockout rounds. The big story is how none of the five African teams managed to get through the group, making this the first time since 1982 that no African team has entered the knockout stage.

I want to make some joke about having a lot of time on my hands these days, but the sad fact is that even if I were still working a 40-hour week I'd have put together these stats, because I'm curious about how deserving each confederation is of its respective places. So, without further ado:

Confederation	Played	Points per game
UEFA	42	1.7
CONMEBOL	15	1.9
CONCACAF	9	0.8
CAF (Africa)	15	0.7
AFC (Asia)	15	1.0

I calculated each confederation's games, wins, draws and losses, and used those to determine how many points each confederation got per game. Some of this is a bit muddied by the fact that European teams faced each other, meaning that draws got counted twice (because each draw generated two points overall, one for each participant). What you see is that the South American teams were the most successful, followed by Europe, and the remaining three confederations quite a bit farther back.

There are some factors at play here, in that Panama and Costa Rica both fielded older teams, and Panama's has no experience of the World Cup, while Egypt (for example) is perhaps overly reliant on Mohamed Salah. And in the case of Senegal, while the team was undoubtedly screwed by the fair play rule, falling behind Japan on the number of yellow cards it got during the previous games, it's also undeniable that it failed to kill off the second game against Japan, when it blew leads twice.

The Asian teams helped themselves by pulling out wins at complete random, including when they were already eliminated. Saudi Arabia, so abject in its first game against Russia, found it in themselves to beat Egypt in their final, meaningless game, while South Korea dragged Germany out with them. 

What's really interesting is how well the South American teams did. Only Peru has crashed out so far, and it still managed to win its final game, although it's also true that Uruguay is the only team from the region to have taken maximum points. But even with the slightly disappointing showings from Colombia, Brazil and (especially) Argentina, South American teams have been more successful than European teams. In fact, between the middle of Matchday 3, when I started this calculation, and the end, UEFA teams dropped from 1.8 points per game to 1.7, owing to the losses by Iceland, Serbia, Germany and England, as well as France and Denmark's draw and Switzerland drawing with Costa Rica.

All these calculations are in service of determining whether the allocations for each confederation are fair or not, but it's hard to tell on the results of a single World Cup group stage. But at this point, I'm finding it hard to argue after all that the European teams are making up the numbers more than the African or Asia or Central/North American teams. 

Still don't think expanding to 48 teams in 2026 is going to be a good idea, though.