Wesley Stevenson
speaker
1,470 appearances
54 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2010
last heard May 2015
Wesley Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I mean, there are currently 209 men's national football teams affiliated to FIFA and then the Marshall Islands, which are the only independent UN-recognised country that doesn't have a national team at all.
And this means that tournaments and qualifying campaigns for those tournaments are getting bigger.
So how many caps would the greats from the past have won if they played in an era where teams averaged nearly 12 games a year, like England during Wayne Rooney's career?
Our projections show that Pelé and Maradona would both have comfortably reached 100 caps had they played in today's era, although Platini and Cruyff would still have fallen short.
There is another reason why players receive more caps today, and that's because they're awarded them for substitute appearances as well as being in the starting 11.
Substitutes weren't permitted in the World Cups until 1970.
Two substitutes were introduced in all international games in 1988, and this was up to three in 1995.
Now, you may be wondering who the most capped player of all time is.
Now, this is Egypt's Ahmed Hassan on 184.
And the most capped active player is Spain's World Cup-winning goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, on 160.
At the age of 33, Casillas doesn't really have time on his side to break the record, though.
Thanks, Ben.
That's all for this week.
Thank you very much for listening.
If you have any numbers you want investigating, please email us at moreorless at bbc.co.uk.
You can also listen to other editions of More or Less.
Exploring subjects such as whether homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant women to how we calculate the distance to the sun.
And you can find these programmes by going to our website bbcworldservice.com forward slash more or less.
This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
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I'm Wesley Stevenson.
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Showing 121–140 of 1,470 · page 7 of 74
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