2026-05-world-cup-linkedin | Company Context

Brazil is the only nation to have qualified for every single World Cup. All 22 of them. 1930 to 2022, without exception.

No other country comes close. Germany missed 2018. Italy missed 2018 and 2022. Argentina missed 1938.

With the 2026 World Cup three weeks away — the biggest in history at 48 teams — we went through 92 years of tournament data to find the numbers that tell the real story of this competition.

A few that stood out:

→ Goals per game has dropped from 5.38 (1954) to 2.69 (2022) — football has become dramatically more defensive over 70 years

→ 6 of 22 host nations won the tournament on home soil — but all 6 wins came before 1999. Since 2002, no host has made the final.

→ Morocco 2022 was the first African nation to reach a World Cup semifinal — in the tournament's 92nd year

The full dataset — every match, goal, squad, and booking since 1930 — is open and free on DataHub.

📊 Explore the data: datahub.io/football/worldcup

Charts: → Goals per game by tournament: datahub.io/football/worldcup/v/0 → World Cup appearances by nation: datahub.io/football/worldcup/v/3

What number from World Cup history surprises you most?

[attach: screenshot of v/3 tournament appearances chart — Brazil at top is the visual hook]