The World Cup final lived up to the tournament’s themes as a penalty and an own goal helped France to victory.
Mario Mandzukic inadvertently nodded Antoine Griezmann’s free-kick past Danijel Subasic to open the scoring with the first own goal in a World Cup final – but the 12th in this tournament, doubling the previous record.
The introduction of VAR means penalties have been a constant and Griezmann tucked away his third and the 22nd successful spot-kick of the tournament, from 29 awarded.
There were also more goals in the final five minutes of games than ever before and here, Press Association Sport takes a look at the key data points and how they affected a dramatic tournament.
Own goals
- The 12 own goals in this tournament doubled the previous record of six from 1998.
- Sommer is only the third goalkeeper to score a World Cup own goal, following Spain’s Andoni Zubizarreta against Nigeria in 1998 and Noel Valladares of Honduras against France in 2014.
- The goal also brought together all three main trends – it came from a stoppage-time penalty, with Bryan Ruiz’s shot hitting the crossbar and bouncing in off the diving Sommer.
Penalties
- Excluding shoot-outs, 16 different players scored from spot-kicks at this World Cup.
- England’s Harry Kane, like Griezmann, scored three penalties, with Australia’s Mile Jedinak and Sweden’s Andreas Granqvist adding two apiece. All bar Griezmann are their respective countries’ captains.
- Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo, Iceland’s Gylfi Sigurdsson and Luka Modric of Croatia had the chance to join that list – all three scored and missed penalties. Argentina’s Lionel Messi was also among those denied from 12 yards.
- The previous high marks saw 18 awarded in 1998 and 2002 and 17 scored, excluding shoot-outs, at France ’98.
Set-pieces
The high penalty total contributed to a runaway record in terms of goals from set-pieces, with England among the main beneficiaries.
- Of the 169 goals at the tournament, 73 came either directly or indirectly from free-kicks, corners, penalties or long throws – 43.2 per cent.
- FIFA provides figures for set-piece goals as far back at the 2002 tournament, with the previous record in that time being 46 out of 147 (31.3 per cent) in 2006.
- Three quarters of England’s goals – nine out of 12 – came directly or indirectly from set-pieces.
Discipline
While VAR has seen more penalties awarded, the tallies of yellow and red cards for this tournament are unusually low.
- Only four players were sent off in this year’s tournament – the first time since the World Cup’s expansion to 32 teams in 1998 that the total has even been in single figures.
- There have been 219 yellow cards (including second yellows) – 37 more than in Brazil four years ago but considerably fewer than any other 32-team World Cup. The record is 345 at the 2006 tournament.
Late goals
- There have been 29 goals scored in the final five minutes of games.
- The previous record came at France 98, with 24 – a total which does not include Laurent Blanc’s ‘Golden Goal’ winner for France in extra-time against Paraguay.
- Seventeen games at Russia 2018 witnessed a late equaliser or winner. Colombia scored in stoppage time to force extra-time against England in the last 16 but were defeated in a penalty shoot-out. Costa Rica’s equaliser against Switzerland in Group F came after the Swiss had taken the lead in the 88th minute.
- Brazil’s second against Costa Rica from Neymar, timed at 96 minutes and 49 seconds, was the latest goal excluding extra-time in a World Cup game since 1966.
Penalty shoot-outs
England won a World Cup penalty shoot-out for the first time as part of a record-equalling four in the tournament.
- The 1990, 2006 and 2014 tournaments also saw four games decided on spot-kicks, including the finals of the latter two.
- Croatia became only the second team, following Argentina in 1990, to win two shoot-outs in the same tournament when they saw off Denmark in the last 16 and Russia in the quarter-finals. Ivan Rakitic scored the winner on both occasions, a first for any player.
- There have now been 30 World Cup penalty shoot-outs since the format was introduced to the event in 1978.
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