Back in November, before the World Cup began, I dove into the treasure trove that is StatsPerform's World Cup charting data archive to look at the trends that have changed and taken over the sport from 1966 to 2018. When did the possession game start to really take over? (1990 or so, and then for real in 2014.) When did teams begin sacrificing shot quantity for shot quality? (Very much 2014.) Was 2018 as strange an outlier for set piece efficiency as it seemed? (Yes.)
With the 2022 World Cup almost complete, we now have another data set to take in.