Thierry Henry goes into the FIFA World Cup™ Final with an unlikely statistic to his name. No player has committed more fouls at the tournament than the forward, who has totalled 17 in France's six matches.

His France team-mates Patrick Vieira and Claude Makelele are also prominent in the standings with 14 and 13 fouls committed respectively. Gianluca Zambrotta is Italy's leading transgressor with 13 fouls.

While Henry has committed most fouls, Italy centre-forward Luca Toni (along with Portugal pair Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Figo) has been on the receiving end of more fouls (23) than any other player in Germany. Gennaro Gattuso (17) and Vieira (16) are also high up in the standings. Gattuso and Vieira, meanwhile, are second best for tackles committed with 31 - Ukraine's Anatoliy Tymoschuk made the most with 32.

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Top guns
A more predictable statistic for Henry is that he and Francesco Totti are the players on show at the FIFA World Cup Final with most shots on target – 11 each. They lie equal second in the rankings behind Miroslav Klose who with 20 attempts put 12 on target and Cristiano Ronaldo who had the same number on target from 21 shots. Both Henry and Totti show an impressive accuracy – their 11 on target arise from only 14 attempts in all. Toni had one more shot but only nine landed on target.

As for the teams' actual goals, Italy have scored 11 so far and conceded only one (an own goal) while France have scored eight while conceding two. Italy have had one penalty from which they scored, France had one penalty (scored) and one against. Italy have scored with three headers, France with one. Italy have had eight assists, France five.

At the other end of the pitch, Italy's Gianluigi Buffon has been the second busiest goalkeeper at this tournament with 23 saves. Portugal's Ricardo made 25 but that was from a total involvement of 660 minutes whereas Buffon's shift has so far totalled 570 minutes. France's Fabien Barthez has been relatively unemployed – just 13 saves in all in 540 minutes which puts him as low down as equal 18th in the 'saves' list. Barthez's busiest game was against Portugal when he made five saves – Buffon made eight against Czech Republic but only one in the previous game against the USA.

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Crossing consistency
Italy have fared much better than France in terms of crossing, completing 34 in 124 attempts (27 per cent) compared with 28 in 133 (21 per cent) by their opponents.

Amazingly in the six games they have played so far, the teams show virtually the same number of short passes, Italy: 1,889, France 1,885 (92 per cent completed by Italy, 93 per cent by France). Italy have played a lot more long passes than their opponents – 586 to 431.

France's long passes have totalled pretty much the same in every game while Italy's statistics show how their approach can vary. They played only 65 against the USA but almost double that – 129 – in their semi-final win over Germany.

Italy have totalled 39 corners in all but their games show a wide variation with 12 coming in their first and last games but only two in the games against Australia and Ukraine.