Before Thursday’s kick-off, Bill Edgar delves into tournaments past to decipher the longest, vastest, latest and oldest World Cup ever.
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The 104 games in this expanded tournament make it more than one quarter of the size of an entire Premier League season (380 matches), and more than one third of a Bundesliga campaign (306 games).
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Europe had 14 teams compared with only four from Africa and Asia combined at the 1990 World Cup; at this year’s tournament Europe has 16 teams while Africa and Asia have 19 (10 and nine respectively).
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USA coach Mauricio Pochettino and Paraguay counterpart Gustavo Alfaro are among five coaches at this World Cup from Argentina’s Santa Fe province (there are six Argentinian coaches in all). So 10% of the tournament’s coaches are from a province of just 3.5 million people.
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Every member of Haiti’s squad at the 1974 World Cup – their only previous appearance – was born in the country, but that applies to only 10 of their 26 players this year; 12 were born in France, two in the United States and one each in Canada and Switzerland.
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If Qatar had been increasing its geographical area by its current size every day since it staged the World Cup final in 2022 (so its size would have doubled the next day, tripled after two days, quadrupled after three days, etc) it would still be only two-thirds of the combined area of this year’s co-hosts.
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Among the 19 World Cup opening matches (excluding the four tournaments where multiple opening games were played simultaneously) this is the first pairing to have occurred twice: these teams drew 1-1 in the 2010 opener in Johannesburg.
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The oldest World Cup manager before this year was aged 71 – Otto Rehhagel with Greece in 2010 – but a quartet are about to beat that mark: Curacao’s Dick Advocaat, 78; Czechia’s Miroslav Koubek, 74; South Africa’s Hugo Broos, 74; and Ghana’s Carlos Queiroz, 73.
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Brazil’s Amarildo, 86, is the only survivor who played in a World Cup final before 1966. He scored Brazil’s first goal in their 3-1 win over Czechoslovakia in the 1962 final.
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2002  is the only World Cup tournament since the 1970s not to have featured either Lothar Matthäus or Lionel Messi. Matthäus was in the West Germany/Germany squads from 1982 to 1998 and Messi began an unbroken run with Argentina in 2006.
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Of the 26 nations to have reached the World Cup semi-finals, Turkey (who did so in 2002) have only played at two World Cups whereas the other 25 countries have all competed in the tournament at least six times.
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3am is the latest at night (UK time), that a World Cup match has ever kicked off, beating Japan v Ivory Coast in Brazil in 2014 (2am); but this mark will be beaten by eight subsequent games at this tournament: five at 4am and three at 5am.
Photograph by Getty Images
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