With Morocco x Spain, Cup reaches seven draws by 0 to 0 and equals record

Morocco beat Spain 3-0 this Tuesday (6), but it was only on penalties. In normal time, the duel at the Education City stadium was the seventh 0-0 of the Qatar Cup. With the number, the 2022 World Cup equals four others as the ones with the most games without the ball in the net (counting only normal time and overtime).

The 2006 World Cups, in Germany, 2010, in South Africa, and 2014, in Brazil, also had seven games without goals. The last two nearly broke the record. In both, the final was decided in extra time after the 0-0 in normal time. With 64 games per Cup since 1998, the three boast an average of 10.3% of games without goals.

The fourth World Cup on the list is the 1982, remembered by the Brazilians for the offensive selection of Telê Santana. But Zico, Sócrates, Éder and company had nothing to do with that record. Italy, champions, debuted precisely with a 0-0 against Poland. As the Cup played in Spain had only 52 matches, the average is higher, 13.5%

In fact, on average, there was an even worse World Cup. In 1978, in Argentina, there were six games without goals among 38 played, or 15.8% of the fights.

In Qatar, the 0-0 between Spaniards and Moroccans was the first in the knockout phase. The other six were in the first phase. The first was Denmark’s disappointing opener against Tunisia. On the same day, goalkeeper Ochoa prevented the opening of the scoring by taking a penalty from Lewandowski, holding the 0-0 between Poland and Mexico.

Morocco and Croatia contributed the most to the statistics, each with two draws. The first was between them, then the Croatians were also 0-0 with Belgium, while the Moroccans drew this Tuesday (6th) with Spain.

We still had in the first phase the uninteresting 0-0 of Uruguay x South Korea and England x United States.

With 55 games played, the average, for now, is 12.7%, but this number could still increase.