The Best World Cup Blog

The group of death is the group that you pray you're country is not randomly selected to. It is the group that is unusually competitive with more quality teams than number of spots available in the next round. This years group drawings are interesting as there doesn't seem to be a clear cut group of death. Judging of rankings alone the third best team in each group is Iceland making group D the group of death Argentina, Croatia, Iceland, and Nigeria. Others think it's group F; Germany, Mexico, Sweden, and South Korea.  Would the lack of a defiant group of death hurt interest and viewership in this world cup?  The answer according to different articles is yes and no.  Yes because the group stage will be seemingly predictable and the top two teams from each group should advance.  No because the seemingly predictable group stage will set the stage for an all time heavyweight knockout stage.  Where it wont be David vs. Goliath but rather David vs. David...

Elimination Stage As mentioned in our first post, these are the 8 groups that were randomly drawn for the World Cup. If you remembered our first post you would know how the group stage works. The top 2 teams advance from each group, and after this we get the round of 16 or as Americans are more familiarized with, elimination stage.  To the right is the bracket after group stage. As you can see in the top left you have the winner of group A vs the runner up of group B. This way you often times get rewarded by winning your group with an opponent that's supposed to be weaker as they came in second, but some groups are much more competitive than others. You also play another group so you  don't play someone who just played in group stage. Due to the uncertainty of group stage people often bet on head to head games or a point system of whom can guess the most first and second place teams. Once in the round of 16 and the bracket is complete you know which team pla...

Group Stage Pictured above are the 32 countries that made it through qualifications and have the privilege to participate in the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Now the way the tournament format works is that within each group every team will play each other once, also called round robin. So for example in group A: Russia will play Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Uruguay. You get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw or tie, and 0 points for a loss. In the event of a tie after the group stage you look at head to head result and goal differential throughout group play. The fact that these countries qualified, provides a huge advantage in terms of business. They get to play and are televised on a world stage, jersey sales and other team apparel, youth appeal, brand recognition, and many others. On the other hand counties like the United States that didn't make the World Cup might experience a disinterest in soccer which affects many of those same business aspects negatively. Sources https...