Last month football learnt of the sad death of Ronnie Radford, a man who will forever be defined by the goal he scored for Hereford United against Newcastle in an FA Cup tie in 1972. On a pitch more suitable for growing the beetroot that Rickie Lambert would later process in a factory, Radford scored from distance to shock the top-flight side with a goal that was both unrepeatable (just look at that ‘turf’) and eminently repeatable (on television every year and on the sort of 101 Greatest Goals VHS tapes you assured your grandma you definitely hadn’t seen when it was delivered in wrapping paper).

To modern eyes, Radford’s decision to shoot from such a distance seems outlandish, barbaric even. In the air-conditioned (literally) footballing world of 2022 players have learned, or been told, that shooting from long range is unproductive and, so far, the 2022 World Cup has absolutely proven the point.

Goalscoring and/or preventing the opposition scoring is the most important thing in football, so in some sense highly original people who say “it’s the only stat that matters” are correct. It’s just that there are ways of improving your chances of scoring, and a World Cup – handily held every four years – is a good way of seeing how theories translates into practice. We are now 12 years into the expected goals era, so by now we should be seeing fruits from the intellectual labour of the chance quality fundamentalists.

A quick think about the 56 World Cup games we’ve enjoyed thus far – that’s right, only eight games left, sorry – and it certainly feels like teams are shooting less often from distance. We didn’t even see a long-range goal until Wales’ injury-time implosion against Iran. If this is the World Cup that has resurrected the reputation of the hulking frontman then it stands to reason that these revivified behemoths should be fed on the sort of diet they thrive on: crosses and scraps.

88% of the way into this World Cup and we have only seen 11 goals from outside the box, from an overall total of 146. Instead, we’ve seen pull-backs and whipped balls stuck into the corridor of uncertainty with a fair measure of certainty. In the nine World Cups between 1966 and 1998, only three saw more headed goals scored than goals from outside the box. In the six tournaments since 1998, four have seen more headed goals. The score so far in 2022 is headers 23-11 long range goals. Unless we are about to see the most extraordinary series of games, this edition will be another victory for the skull crew.

But could it all be random? What if players from older World Cups were simply better at shooting from distance. Maybe it’s the football equivalent of no-one under the age of 50 being able to bleed a radiator. Yes, that must be it; the older generation were simply better at shooting from long range and reaped the rewards.

Sorry, but no.

As the very interesting chart – in my opinion – below shows, the World Cups of 1966 and 1970 served up an extraordinary number of shots, more than 35 per game in each edition, yet substantially more of them were from outside the penalty area than within. There’s a beautiful chronological progression too, with 1974 and 1978 having the next highest number of shots per game, football still metamorphosing from its mid-century state of “you have a shot then we’ll have a shot then you have a shot then we’ll have a shot and let’s see who wins the ruddy game”.

After that, the next 10 World Cups see a remarkably similar outcome, with between 25 and 32 shots per game and around 45-50% of them coming from inside the penalty area. Yes, each World Cup would experience local factors such as air density, the levels of brutality accepted by referees, the effects of timewasting and the design of the official ball, but any fan going to a World Cup game between 1982 and 2010 could expect to see roughly the same amount of shots and proportionally from the same areas.

But then everything changes. 2014, the first World Cup held in the xG era, saw the lowest number of non-penalty shots per game in recorded history to that point, but the highest proportion of them from inside the box. Would the trend continue in 2018? Very much so, with another decline in non-penalty shots per game and another rise in close range proportion, while 2022 has seen the trend extend even further. We’ve never enjoyed as few shots at a World Cup than we have in 2022 but we’ve never before seen teams display such prowess and patience in creating scoring opportunities.

All the teams who have impressed at this World Cup, from Brazil to France to England to new-look Ronaldo-less Portugal have scored plenty of delightful goals but nearly all of them have been beautifully worked moves finished off from inside the box.

The age of the long shot is over. Accept the triumph of progress and enjoy the smorgasbord of close range produce we have been given in its stead.