Chris Dunlavy

Ally McCoist, the ITV pundit, expressed his astonishment at the sheer number of goals scored by substitutes at this year’s World Cup.
“We’ve already had 17 goals by subs in this tournament,” said the Scot during Portugal’s victory over Uruguay on Monday night. “Compared to just ten in the entire group stage in 2018, that’s a remarkable statistic.”

Actually, it’s not that remarkable at all. After two rounds of group games, subs had scored 21 per cent of all the goals scored at Qatar 2022 - the highest figure in World Cup history.

But hold on. This is also the first World C...