The World Cup's most embarrassing stat keeps getting worse

Here's a stat nobody wants to own: own goals in the World Cup have been rising dramatically. In the entire history of the tournament from 1930 to 2014, there were about 40 own goals total. Then the 2018 World Cup in Russia alone produced 12 own goals — more than any single tournament before it. The 2022 Qatar World Cup wasn't far behind.

So why the sudden spike? It's not that defenders got worse overnight. Modern football demands high pressing and fast build-up play from the back, which means defenders handle the ball under pressure far more than they used to. Add in the speed of crosses and deflections, and the margin for error is razor-thin.

There's also a quieter reason: FIFA changed how own goals are classified. Shots that deflect off a defender and change direction now count as own goals more often than before, when they might have been credited to the attacker. So part of the "rise" is really a change in how we count them.

Either way, the own goal has gone from a rare embarrassment to a regular feature of World Cup football — and no defender wants to be the one adding to the tally.