If it were possible to forget the millions wasted, the thousands of lives lost in the construction of stadiums, the enormous corruption in the concession of the tournament, the systematic laundering by FIFA, the fact that the national championships were interrupted for a first time… If it were possible to forget all that, which it is not, we would crown Qatar ’22 as one of the best World Cups in history.

With 172 goals scored, an average of 2.7 per game (the highest since the World Cup in Spain ’82), he overtook the highest scoring leagues of all time, France ’98 and Brazil 0’14, all two with 171. goals (2.7).

In 10 matches, 60 goals were scored, more than a third (35%) of all those in the tournament: eight in England-Iran (6-2), seven in Spain-Costa Rica (7-0) and Portugal . -Switzerland (6-1), six in the France-Argentina (3-3), Cameroon-Serbia (3-3) and Costa Rica-Germany (2-4) final, and five in Croatia-Canada (4-1 ), France-Australia (4-1), Portugal-Ghana (3-2) and Brazil-Korea (4-1).

Seven of the 64 matches (only 11%) ended in a draw, all in the first phase except for the fateful round of 16 Spain-Morocco, with the African victory on penalties; and in ten games (15.5 percent), only one goal has been scored.

It should be remembered that Qatar ’22 was the seventh and last World Cup with the 32-team format: in North America ’26 there will be 48 and the goalscoring record will be broken… so the “future” scale will be the average per game, where Switzerland’54 (140 goals in 26 games) will not remain in legend forever: 5.38 per game. In the “modern era”, the average has always been equal, between 2.2 in Italy ’90 and 2.9 in Mexico ’70.