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England’s squad signed off for their summer holidays by maintaining their 100% record after scoring 10 times in their qualification double header. As well as having virtually guaranteed their place in South Africa next summer England are also just three matches from completing the first 100% World Cup qualifying record since the West Germans won all eight matches on route to Spain ‘82. However, how much significance can be placed on these statistics when it comes to the real competition?

England, Spain, and Holland have all won every match so far and in doing so matched Belgium in 1994 and Romania in 1998 in being the only teams to have won at least their first six matches in qualifying (’94 WC qualifying onwards). Romania went on to win their opening nine matches before a draw in their final qualifier.

Increasing the sample to look at teams that have had a winning streak of at least six matches during qualifying for the last four World Cup’s in the European qualifiers produces 11 teams: Belgium (94); Austria, Bulgaria and Romania (98); Sweden (02); Czech Republic, England, Holland, Poland, Sweden, and Ukraine (06).

Of these teams four were knocked out in the group stages of the actual competition while Belgium qualified for the knockouts despite finishing third in their group and would have been eliminated in every other year. Three of the teams to qualify for the knockout stages won their groups, three came second and Belgium were third. Five sides were subsequently eliminated in the first knock-out round (the last 16) while the other two lost in the quarter-finals.

In the South American qualifiers only four teams have managed a winning streak of five matches (two occasions were the opening five qualifiers) and none have won six in a row. These teams were Bolivia (94), Argentina (98 and 02) and Ecuador (02). Three of these sides were knocked out in the group stages of the World Cup itself with Argentina in ’98 going on to make the quarter-finals after topping their group by winning all three matches.

The last five qualifying tournaments for the UEFA European Championships have seen 13 teams win at least six consecutive matches with one team failing to qualify (Russia in ’00) and nine of the other teams being knocked out in the group stages at the tournament. In fact only one team has made it past the first knockout round (the quarter-finals) and that was the eventual Champions in 2004 – Greece.

All these stats point to teams that win several consecutive matches in qualifying failing to deliver in the competition proper (apart from Greece). However, should Spain (four qualifiers left), Holland (one) and England (three) complete their qualifying campaigns with perfect records they can take comfort from the only other team to have completed the WC European qualifying groups with a 100% record –  West Germany in 1982 – as they reached the final that year where they lost to Italy.