By Mark Gleeson
ATLANTA, June 19 (Reuters) – The expanded field of 48 teams at this year’s World Cup means that not only do the top two teams advance from each of the 12 first-round groups but also the best eight third-placed finishers.
As the weekend’s action across Canada, Mexico and the United States begins to give the group standings some shape, so the calculators will come out to start determining what the minimum requirement will be to advance to the last 32.
It is only the second time a tournament run by world football’s governing body FIFA has featured as many teams, so past experience is limited to last November’s U-17 World Cup in Qatar.
But it is far from the first time that third-placed finishers in the group phase of a tournament have had an opportunity to advance.
This stretches back to the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, which was the first where the four best third-placed finishers from the six groups of four teams progressed to the knockout rounds along with the top two teams in each.
That was still in an era when two points were awarded for a win, rather than three, but a survey of 38 FIFA tournaments and continental championships where there has been a 24-team field, and therefore four places available for the best third-placed finishers to advance, gives some indication of what will be needed points-wise to advance to the knockout stages.
HOW THE POINTS TALLY UP
*Five points: Never has a team collecting five points from their three group games finished out of the first two places in the group stage.
*Four points: Only twice has a team with four points in third place in the group not advanced, and both instances were at the U-20 World Cup. But bizarrely, Norway finished bottom of their World Cup group in 1994 with four points, and Ukraine did too at the last European Championship in Germany two years ago.
*Three points: There is a slightly less than 50% success rate for teams finishing on three points, but those sides almost all have a positive goal difference. Three points and a negative goal difference leaves a less than one-in-three chance of advancing. One exception was Norway at the 2019 U-20 World Cup, who, despite a positive goal difference of eight, were eliminated. That included a 12-0 victory over Honduras where Erling Haaland scored nine goals. At the 48-team U-17 World Cup in Qatar last year, four of the six teams who finished third in their respective groups with three points advanced.
*Two points: In only two of the tournaments surveyed, with three points for a win, did a side finish among the best four third-placed teams with a meagre two points, most recently Tanzania at the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco late last year.
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Atlanta; Editing by Toby Davis)
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