Argentina’s World Cup penalty numbers are a clear statistical outlier

I looked at the penalty numbers from the last two World Cups, and honestly, the raw numbers alone are already pretty insane.

Team Penalties
Argentina 8
England 4
Brazil 3
Portugal 3
France 3
Poland 2
Switzerland 2
Iran 2
Germany 2

Argentina received 8 penalties, while the next-highest team, England, received 4.
So Argentina had double the penalties of the second-highest team, and almost three times as many as Brazil, Portugal, or France.

What makes it even more interesting is that France played roughly the same number of matches across this period, yet only received 3 penalties compared to Argentina’s 8.

I also ran a basic standard deviation check on the raw penalty totals:
Mean penalties = 3.22
Standard deviation = 1.92
Argentina = 8 penalties

That puts Argentina at around:
z = 2.49 standard deviations above the mean
That is not just “a little higher than average.” That is a very clear statistical outlier.

Under a basic normal distribution assumption, Argentina sits around the 99th percentile of this sample.

Conclusion:
No, this alone does not technically prove corruption or match-fixing. But pretending this is totally normal is stupid. The numbers are clearly unusual, and Argentina is by far the biggest outlier in the data.
At minimum, this is highly suspicious and absolutely deserves a penalty-by-penalty review.