Goals win games.
Defenses win World Cups.

Notes from the margins

• The final is decided at the back. The two finalists attack about equally — champions average 2.40 goals a game, runners-up 2.16, a gap that's statistical noise (p=0.39). But champions concede significantly fewer: 0.79 vs 1.09 (p=0.03). When two great teams meet in the final, the better defense lifts the cup.
• You can win it without a prolific attack. Spain 2010 scored just 1.14 per game — below the all-time average — yet lifted the trophy on a defense that conceded only 2 goals in 7 matches.
• Leaking goals is (almost) disqualifying. The stingiest title runs — France ’98, Italy ’06, Spain ’10 — each conceded about 0.29 per game, roughly two goals across the whole tournament. The lone exception, West Germany ’54, shipped goals but outscored everyone.
• The tragic scorers. Hungary ’54 scored more per game (4.2) than any finalist in history — and still lost the final. Beautiful, prolific, runners-up.
• Attack and defense are independent. Across all 489 teams the correlation between scoring and conceding is essentially zero (r = −0.05) — knowing how much a team scores tells you nothing about how much it concedes.