Dearth of goals as Total Football and Samba-style go missing

This World Cup has so far served up 123 goals in 56 matches at an average of 2.2 goals per game. This is a far cry from the incredible average of 5.385 goals per game served up in Switzerland in 1954. Ah, innocent days, when goal scoring really was the prime aim of the game.

Interestingly, the World Cup with the lowest average goals per game to date is Italy in 1990, with only 2.12, so this World Cup may not be the lowest. Other recent World Cups have hardly been "goal-fests" either with 2006 giving us 2.3 and 2002 serving up 2.52.

Although 2010 will end up being one of the lowest scoring World Cups, one can't deny it's been interesting. The odd results (Spain 0, Switzerland 1; Germany 0, Serbia 1 to name a couple), the failure of big European teams (France and Italy just beating England to that prize), the indisputable evidence that video technology is long overdue (England's "goal that never was" and Argentina's "goal that never should have been").

But the entertainment in many games has been sadly lacking. Games such as England v Algeria, Portugal v Brazil, Portugal v Ivory Coast, Japan v Cameroon (oh, the list is too long) have been dire. I didn;t see Parauguay v NewZealand or Switzerland v Honduras, but one can only imagine how bad these must have been.

The trouble is, as I said in an earlier piece, that FIFA do nothing to support attacking play. It would be nice to see a feast of attacking football for the rets of this World Cup. But as Dutch boss Bert Van Marwijk says ahead of today's Brazil v Holland quarter-final, the days of the Dutch Total Football and Brazil's traditional "samba" style are over.

"It was a long time ago, Total Football - if you play like that now it's very hard to win the Cup," said Van Marwijk.

FIFA need to address that.