The World Football Federation (FIFA) has released interesting figures for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers in Europe, where 12/16 of the world's No. 1 tournament teams have been identified, including: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland.
226: In his 226th match for the national team, Cristiano Ronaldo received his first red card for the national team when Portugal lost 0-2 to the Republic of Ireland in the penultimate match of the qualifiers. The striker was sent off for an off-field collision with Dara O'Shea.
50: Erling Haaland became the sixth player to reach 50 international goals in less than 50 caps for the national team when he scored a hat-trick against Israel, taking Norway closer to a ticket back to the World Cup. He finished the qualifying round with 16 goals, equal to Robert Lewandowski's record set in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers in Russia, bringing his total goals for the Norwegian team to 55 goals/48 matches.
48: Haaland also became the first European player in about 48 years to score in all of his team's qualifiers, and the only player to do so in more than six games. The most recent player to achieve this achievement is Tomas Sjoberg of Sweden, with a goal in 4 consecutive qualifying matches at the 1978 World Cup.
41: Ronaldo leveled and then overcame Carlos Ruiz ( Guatemala)'s World Cup qualifying record for the most goals in the recent qualifiers. In total, Ronaldo has scored 41 goals in 52 qualifiers, surpassing Ruiz's goal of 39.
39 39 With eight consecutive wins, England extended their unbeaten run in qualifying to 39 games. Their most recent defeat was against Ukraine on October 10, 2009 in the penultimate match of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers in South Africa. Meanwhile, Belgium have extended their unbeaten streak to 36 matches.
28: Austria, Norway and Scotland have ended a 28-year wait for a place in the World Cup. The trio, who have topped groups C, H and I, all participated in the tournament in France in 1998.
17: At 17 years and 290 days, Konstantinos Karetsas has become the youngest player to score in European qualifiers in more than 32 years, scoring just three minutes after Greece's match against Belarus. He followed in the footsteps of John Jensen of Denmark, who scored the winning goal 4-0 against Albania in 1993 at the age of 16 years and 149 days.
1: Troy Parrott became the first Republic of Ireland player to score an away hat-trick in the World Cup qualifiers, in a dramatic win over Hungary. The AZ striker scored the decisive goal in the 96th minute at puskas Arena, bringing a 3-2 victory to Ireland, thereby overcoming the home team to take second place in Group I and qualify for the play-off round.
0: He became the first European team to win all qualifiers without conceding. Thomas Tuchel's side have won eight consecutive home and away games against Albania, Latvia, Andorra and Serbia.
Jordan Pickford has kept seven clean sheets in those games, equal the clean sheet record set by an English goalkeeper by Joe Hart ahead of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, while raising his total number of consecutive clean sheets to ten, a national record.
