Costa Rica have the best offside trap in the 2014 World Cup

Dutch striker Robin van Persie was caught offside 9 times against Costa Rica.

Costa Rica may have been eliminated from the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Brazil after their penalty shootout defeat to Netherlands in a quarterfinal encounter, however their effort in the tournament has surely earned them a sense of pride within themselves as they ended their tournament defeated only once, that too on penalties despite being one of the minnows.

Much of the credit goes to the offside traps employed by manager Jorge Luis Pinto with statistics compiled by MatchStory revealing that the team caught the offside 41 times throughout the competition, more than any other team.

RANK	TEAM	GAMES PLAYED	SUCCESSFUL OFFSIDE TRAPS
1	Costa Rica	5	41
2	Germany	5	17
3	United States of America	4	15
4	England	3	13
5	Netherlands	5	10
6	Cameroon	3	10
7	Argentina	5	10
8	Bosnia and Herzegovina	3	10
9	Mexico	4	8
10	Spain	3	8
10	Algeria	4	8

In their last match alone, Netherlands were caught offside a total of 13 times, two times more than against Italy who were caught 11 times on record. Offside traps are hard to pull off, and remarkable statistics such as these shows how the Costa Rican defenders performed exceptionally well as a unit.