Interesting Football Facts

A collection of some of the most interesting statistics in football. Credit to /r/soccer for a lot of the below statistics.

• Juventus haven’t received a single red card in all competitions this season.

• Spurs haven’t won a single game without Gareth Bale scoring since January 1st, 2013. Also, when Bale joined Spurs he didn’t win any of his first 24 games.

• In the 1966/67 season, Jock Stein’s Celtic team won every competition they entered. In doing so they became the first British side to win the competition and also the first from Northern Europe, ending the dominance of the Mediterranean countries. That same team are still also to this day the only entirely home-grown side to lift the trophy. Every player in that Celtic team were born within 30 miles of Celtic Park, 10 of them within an 11 mile radius of the stadium.

• Not from this season, by quite a long way actually. But Reading went on a tour of Italy in 1913. On that tour, they beat Milan 5-0, Genoa 4-2, and the Italy team 2-0. The newspaper Corriere della Serra described them as ‘without doubt, the finest foreign team seen in Italy.’ Reading were not yet a football league team.

• This season, Brighton have not lost any matches from a winning position and haven’t won any matches from a losing position.

• Mario Zagallo is the only man to be associated with four World Cup winning teams. He won the tournament as a player in 1958 and 1962 before becoming the first man to win it as a player and a manager when he led the 1970 team to the trophy as a manager. He then worked as an assistant coach in the winning Brazil side of 1994. He remains one of only two players that have went on to win the World Cup as both a player and as a manager.

• Chelsea are on course of playing 68-69 (depending if they get to Europa League Final) official games this season (2013/2013), which is the highest amount of games any European team has played in one season.

• Chelsea player Oscar has also played 88 games since 6 May 2012 with no break longer than a week.

• This season Chelsea are the first holders of the Champions League not to progress beyond the group stages.

• Leeds United have gone 21 (and counting) games without a first-half goal.

• Liverpool have had the most shots on target this season and the youngest average squad age. However, Aston Villa are the team that boast the youngest average age of their starting eleven.

• All 38 of Hugo Sanchez’s goals from his Pichichi-winning 1989/90 season were scored on his first touch.

• Newcastle have not scored from a corner in over 250 attempts, since the beginning of the 2011-2012 season.

• AS Roma have both the best attack and the 2nd worst defense in Serie A.
• Roma can also be the first Italian side to win ten Coppa Italias if they defeat city rivals Lazio in the final of the tournament at the end of the season. Currently, Roma and Juventus are both tied on 9.

• The largest official attendance for a domestic game in the UK was the 1938 Scottish Cup final between Aberdeen and Celtic with 146,433 fans attending. The highest official attendance of a league game in the UK was a Scottish league game between Celtic and Rangers in which 118,567 people attended.

• Manchester United have never lost a Premier League match at Old Trafford when they have been leading at half time.
• Manchester United have not conceded a single penalty all season.

• Bayer Leverkusen was the first team to reach the Champions League final without ever winning the domestic league title before.

• Berlin is the only capital city in any of the major European leagues to not have a team representing them in the nation’s top division.

• Totti, Mata, Messi, Payet, Walcott, Müller: The 6 players in Europe’s top 5 leagues with double figures for both goals & assists this season.

• Argentina have provided the most winners of the Copa Libertadores with a total 22 winning sides coming from that country. Brazil lie in second place having provided 16 winners of the tournament.

• Argentinian side Independiente are have won the Copa Libertadores 7 times in total, more than any other team. However, the two teams that have appeared most in the final are Argentinian side Boca Juniors (10 times) and Uruguayan giants Penarol (10 times). Penarol have finished runners-up (5 times) more than any other side in the tournament’s history.