u/Goatingo

Football seems to be trending towards a more offensively oriented sport than ever before.

Short analysis of goals scored per game in the last 6 World Cups shows a clear pattern.

2026 USA / Canada / Mexico (Ongoing)2.93 (as of today)

2022 Qatar 2.69 (-0.24 🔻)

2018 Russia 2.64 (-0.29 🔻)

2014 Brazil 2.67 (-0.26 🔻)

2010 South Africa 2.27 (-0.66 🔻)

2006 Germany 2.30 (-0.63 🔻)

Some of the extreme scoring can be contributed to more teams, which has lowered the average team quality at the World Cup and made for some high scoring matches.

Is the football overall just more direct and attackingly oriented than ever before? Is the defending to blame?

https://preview.redd.it/lzo6wwzgj1ah1.jpg?width=538&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48619d839e5119faa35a01ab8e21ae5dba915d52

In the history of football, few players brought happiness to as many people as Manuel Francisco dos Santos. Smiling and carefree like a boy, he dribbled in ways never seen before, turning opponents into fools unable to stop him. Nobody believed that a player with a curved spine and a right leg six centimetres shorter than the left, both bent inward, could humiliate them the way he did.

He was nicknamed Garrincha by his sister Rosa, after small, playful brown birds. Born in 1933, his physical deformities went untreated, hardly surprising given that his father Amaro was an alcoholic. He worked in a textile factory at 14, was fired for laziness, and only kept his job because the factory owner also owned local club Pau Grande.

Professional football held little interest for him. While the whole of Brazil was devastated by the 1950 World Cup final loss to Uruguay, Garrincha was out fishing. Clubs rejected him over his physical condition, and the trials he did get he managed to sabotage himself, missing one because he hadn't brought his kit, abandoning another to catch a bus home. It was only at 19, practically dragged there by a former player, that he joined Botafogo.

At his second training session he humiliated Brazil international Nilton Santos, selling him tricks and nutmegging him. Santos had no choice but to demand the club sign the teenager. Garrincha repaid the faith with a hat-trick on debut and went on to spend 12 years at Botafogo, scoring 232 goals in 581 appearances.

His moment came at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. The Brazilian football federation was so anxious about the tournament that they hired a psychologist and replaced female camp staff with male to keep players focused. Garrincha was assessed as infantile by the psychologist, but was forgiven because they thought he was 17. He was 25.

When coach Feola finally paired Garrincha and the teenage Pelé together against the Soviet Union, heavily favoured at the time, chroniclers called what followed "the three best minutes in football history." From the first minute the two of them struck the post twice before Vavá scored. Brazil won and never looked back, going on to lift their first World Cup title with a 5:2 win over hosts Sweden in the final, where Garrincha assisted the first 2 goals for Brazil.

Wales defender Mel Hopkins, who faced Garrincha in the quarter-final, summed him up best: "When you faced him, his legs pointing one way and his body the other, you could easily think he was disabled. But my God, how he played. He attacked at incredible speed. I believe he was more dangerous than Pelé; a phenomenon capable of pure magic. You never knew which way he'd go because of those legs. He could go either way, beat you on the outside or cut inside. He also had a ferocious shot. Without question, Garrincha would be a superstar today."

In 1962, with Pelé injured in the second group game, Garrincha carried Brazil almost entirely on his own. He scored 2 goals in both quarter and semi final matches, he was named the best player of the tournament, shared the Golden Boot with four goals, and as Brazil won the title he became the only player in history to combine all three honours at a single World Cup. Brazil with both Garrincha and Pelé on the pitch never lost a single match.

His funniest gimmick came in the quarter-final against England, when a stray dog ran onto the pitch. English striker Jimmy Greaves dived to catch it and the dog urinated on him. Garrincha couldn't stop laughing and later adopted the dog, naming him Bi, short for bi-campeones (back to back champions).

Off the pitch his life was chaotic. He had at least 14 children with five different women. He drank heavily from an early age, grew more dependent on alcohol after each World Cup, and never properly treated his damaged knees and spine, preferring folk healers to doctors. He caused a car crash that killed his mother-in-law, and later married the woman involved, popular Brazilian singer Elza Soares.

By the 1966 World Cup in England he was a shadow of himself. At 33, he played his 50th and final game for Brazil against Hungary, the only match he ever lost in a Brazil shirt. After the game he never represented his country again.

The following decade was a slow decline. He was hospitalised eight times in a single year. On January 20, 1983, he died of liver cirrhosis aged 49, leaving behind at least 14 children and virtually no money. Banknotes had been found stuffed in wardrobes, furniture and fruit bowls at his home.

His funeral was as spectacular as his life. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the procession from the Estadio Maracana to Pau Grande, his birth village.
His gravestone read: "Here rests the one who was the Joy of the People - Mane Garrincha.