What shapes a match
Summary + sample · full document is 968 words
Set pieces decide tournaments — roughly a third of World Cup goals come from dead-ball situations. This page explains how we identify each team's primary corner, free-kick, and penalty takers.
The dataset lives at data/wc2026/set_piece_takers.csv (one row per nation, 48 total). It is produced by scripts/build_set_piece_takers.py from on-disk FBref Big-5 player-season tables; no network is required.
| Column | Definition |
|---|---|
team_id, team_name | Identity. |
corner_taker_primary, _id, _basis, _volume | Highest-volume corner taker among squad members in their most recent FBref Big-5 season. _basis records the source season (fbref_2021_22, etc.); _volume is the count of corners taken in that season. |
corner_taker_secondary, _id, _volume | The next-highest squad member. Surfaced because real teams often have a left-foot / right-foot split between the two corners. |
penalty_taker_primary, _id, _basis, _record | Highest-pk_att squad member in their most recent season with any PK attempts. _record is formatted "<made>/<att> in <season>". |
free_kick_taker_primary, _id, _basis, _volume | Highest-FK_Pass squad member among non-goalkeeper rows. |
notes | Coverage and split-taker annotations (see below). |
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