A total of 830 football professionals went to the finals of the World Cup in Qatar.
Most of them are probably hardly known to the German TV audience.
One that everyone knows is Lionel Messi.
The Argentinian superstar starts the tournament against Saudi Arabia on the third day of the World Cup.
The 35-year-old is the most experienced World Cup participant in Qatar, with 1625 minutes of play spread over 19 games, he is ahead of German captain Manuel Neuer (1500 minutes) - and could attack record holder Lothar Matthäus.
Messi plays for French capital club Paris Saint-Germain, making him one of 422 players working for clubs in Europe's five major leagues - around half of all participants.
Most of the players come from the English Premier League (138), followed by the top leagues from Spain (83), Germany (81), Italy (65) and France (55).
Broken down by club, one German club is quite far ahead in the ranking of the most frequently represented teams: behind FC Barcelona, from which 17 players are going to the World Cup in Qatar, are FC Bayern Munich and Manchester City, each with one professional less.
SPIEGEL has analyzed where the World Cup players come from, who are the most dangerous players and which German player is the biggest social media star.
Scroll through our graphic.
Let's start with the analysis of the German selection.
Germany is at a World Cup finals for the 20th time, only record world champions Brazil have participated more often.
Recently, the German performance has hardly raised any hopes for the title, but at least after the goal average of the past four years, the DFB selection is among the best in the world.
On the other hand, it looks difficult in the defensive statistics.
You can see the comparison of all 32 World Cup teams in the next chapter.
As a team, England score the most goals per game, but the most prolific player is Cameroon: Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting.
In the Bundesliga, the Bayern striker was a substitute for a long time, but this season he got more minutes.
The right footer took the opportunity.
The next section on the individual players shows which left-footed player has the best goal average at club level and who is shown the most yellow cards.
So far it has almost only been about field players.
But what about the goalies?
Especially in tournaments in knockout mode, the keeper is often particularly important, because individual mistakes decide whether you progress or are eliminated, and penalty shoot-outs are possible.
The final chapter reveals which goalkeepers have the best goals-against stats and most clean sheets at club level.
methodology
AreaPhoto origin and Datesexpand
The photos of the players come from
Imago
.
The detailed data of the more than 800 participants in the soccer World Cup are based on information from the websites Transfermarkt.de and Sport.de.
The World Cup finals statistics of the national teams come from Wikipedia.
Data on the World Cup participants were also compared with the official FIFA list of participants.
The data is as of November 20, 2022. Subsequent changes to the squads are not taken into account.
Data from the World Cup preliminary round matches from November 20th are also not included in the statistics.
Expand sectionInformation about the players
The
age
given refers to the age of the respective player on the first day of the World Cup tournament on November 20, 2022. Individual data on
international matches
and international matches at World Cup tournaments includes all matches of the respective footballer from his/her first match for the national team.
Club match data is for current season (
2022/23
) and previous season (2021/22) only.
Performance-related data such as goals per 90 minutes or yellow cards per 90 minutes are only displayed if the footballer in question has accumulated playing time of at least 900 minutes in the two analyzed club seasons.
Expand areaInformation about the teams
The
international match statistics for each national team
includes all games from 2019 onwards. Performance indicators such as goals per game and goals conceded per game also relate exclusively to games from 2019 to 2022.