This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/DSRI2399 on 2025-09-12 02:51:17+00:00.
So I was ecstatic when Ecuador finished second in our qualifiers, equaling our best ever qualifying result (despite starting with a 3-point deduction thanks to Byron Castillo — please don’t remind me). Without the deduction, we’d have 32 points, our best haul ever.
Defensively, it’s the best qualifying performance we’ve ever had by far, as we conceded 5 goals in the 18 games played; the next best was the world champions with 10 goals conceded. We equaled the record for least goals conceded in the CONMEBOL qualifying by Brazil for last World Cup (which was talked about at length back then).
preview.redd.it/6dq5op84lnof1.png?width=1222&form…
Offensively, we were pretty mediocre. We scored the same number of goals as 6th-place Paraguay. And Colombia (who finished below us), scored twice as many. But I’m an optimist when it comes to football (not so much in life lol), so let me focus on the good here.
How does our defensive record stack up against the rest of the world? I pulled the top 30 FIFA ranked nations — that way you get at least five above us and five below us — and tallied their goals conceded since the last World Cup. I figured the stretch between World Cups was a pretty reasonable sample to look at. Mind you, these aren’t just qualifiers, they also include continental cups and whatever weird new tournaments UEFA decides to come up with.
Here’s a screenshot of what I got:
preview.redd.it/9r3qmjiaknof1.png?width=727&forma…
And here’s a link to the document if any of you want to look at it more closely and filter it however you like. Hope you understand that I made it view-only lol. Does that let viewers filter things? I hope so.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…/edit?gid=0#gid=0
So as you can see, in terms of GA/game since last World Cup, Senegal is leading everyone at 0.38 goals conceded per game. Well done, Senegal! Ecuador is second with 0.41
(Maaaybe you could even argue Ecuador’s been better defensively than Senegal anyway — we’re up against four top-20 nations every cycle. Or maybe I’m a bit biased and still a little butthurt about getting Koulibaly’d out of Qatar three years ago. What do you all think?)
At least we can say that Ecuador has conceded the fewest goals from any top-30 country since last World Cup, and that we’re second in GA/game only to Senegal.
Shoutout to Japan, Australia, England, and Iran! (I’ll let the world champions congratulate themselves since they’re so good at it lol)…
Would love to include more countries here too — I’m sure some teams outside the top 30 have put up really impressive defensive numbers. Might even expand this into a top-50 once all the qualifiers wrap up.
Anyway, as an Ecuadorian, I wanted to post this so more people knew a bit more about countries that usually don’t get the spotlight, especially if some of us are performing at a higher level than usual. So when your country gets a matchup with Ecuador in the World Cup, know that you’ll have a pretty tough time going 1-0 up. The likes of Moisés Caicedo and Alan Franco will harass your dribbly boys. Willian Pacho and Piero Hincapié will win a lot of aerial duels and one-on-ones, and Enner Valencia will most definitely become prime Ronaldo for like 2 out of the 90 minutes. We will struggle to score, but boy will you struggle with us.
Feel free to comment any notes or suggestions for the table. I triple-checked the edge cases, but please let me know if I got any of the numbers wrong — it took me a while to compile this and I probably have a digit or two off somewhere.