National Teams Arrive — Just in Time for the World Cup
With the FIFA World Cup almost upon us, plenty of you wrote in asking the same thing: where are the national teams? Today I'm answering that question. Smart Soccer Stats now covers international football — and not just this summer's tournament, but four decades of it.
Forty years of international football
I didn't want to add the World Cup as a one-off and leave it there. So alongside it, I've pulled in the other major international competitions and their qualifying campaigns, going back roughly 40 years:
- FIFA World Cup — and its qualifiers
- UEFA Euro
- UEFA Nations League
- Copa América
- Africa Cup of Nations
- Asian Cup
- CONCACAF
- Gold Cup
- ...with related qualification rounds that feed into them
That's a long arc of history — from the giants who turn up at every tournament to the underdogs who grind through qualifying for one unforgettable summer.
A new filter: domestic vs. national
The league list has grown a lot lately, and adding international competitions on top risked turning it into a wall of options. So I've added a simple switch to keep things manageable: filter by domestic (club) games or national (international) games.
Flip it one way and you're back in the world of league football and club rivalries. Flip it the other and you're looking at countries, not clubs — World Cup runs, Euro streaks, continental campaigns. It's a small control, but it makes navigating the bigger catalogue far less of a chore.
Good news: goal scorers, by name
Here's a bonus I'm genuinely pleased about. For national-team games, the data includes the names of the goal scorers — not just the scoreline. So you can see who settled a World Cup knockout tie or fired a country through qualifying, not only that it finished 2–1.
It's the first time scorer-level detail has appeared anywhere on the site, and international football felt like exactly the right place to start.
The honest part: limited extra stats
Now the trade-off. Time was short before the tournament, and for the national teams I wasn't able to track down detailed, reliable extra stats — things like corners, cards, and the deeper match data you'll find for some club leagues. Rather than fill those columns with numbers I couldn't stand behind, I left them out.
As always, I'd rather be upfront that some stats are missing than pretend the record is complete. If and when I find trustworthy sources for the finer detail, I'll add it.
Go explore
It's all live now in the Game Statistics Explorer. You could dig into 40 years of FIFA World Cup — just in time to get your eye in before this summer's World Cup kicks off.
As always, if there's a competition or stat you want to see next, tell me. Your suggestions shape what I build. Stay tuned — there's more on the way.