Heading into the simultaneous final set of matches in many of the groups in the 2010 World Cup this week, teams needed calculators to work out exactly what they needed to do to advance into the knockout stage of the tournament. One of the indelible images of the tournament has been players from Ghana reviewing the latest results from the concurrent Serbia vs. Australia match with every new score to see how it impacted their potential progress to the next round. (Ghana eventually did advance despite losing to Germany in their last match.)
However, one score line in the second round of group matches in Group G made such concerns about different permutations irrelevant: 7-0. That was the margin by which Portugal beat North Korea in one of the most one-sided contests in World Cup history. Combined with the Ivory Coast’s 3-1 defeat to Brazil, the path to advancement out of the “Group of Death” became quite clear.
Brazil clinched a berth in the Round of 16 coming into the final matches of group play; meanwhile, Portugal is all but assured of making it through to the next round thanks to their gargantuan margin of victory over North Korean. The Ivory Coast can catch Portugal on points with a victory over North Korea and a Portuguese loss to Brazil; while both of these actions are certainly possible, it’s far less likely that the Ivory Coast will also be able to make up the goal differential of nine they will need in order to advance through to the next round. However, it’s not impossible - after all, the Ivory Coast lost to Brazil by two goals while North Korea’s defence certainly can be breached for goals in bunches.
The most likely scenario, however, is that all eyes will be on Brazil and Portugal and the former colony will be battling its former homeland for supremacy of the group while the Ivory Coast and North Korea engage in a consolation prize match. Portugal needs a win over Brazil in order to take the top spot in Group G; any other result sees Brazil win the group.
However, there is a catch in all of this: the usual reward for winning your group of an answering path to the semi-finals might not be there this time. That’s because Group H has been turned on its head thanks to Spain losing its first match against Switzerland. It’s far from a certainty that the European champions will win their group - they very well could wind up in second place in the group, which would be very bad news for the Group G winner, who would have to play them in the first round of the knockout stage.
This could lead to a scenario where the Group G winner would have to play Spain and the Netherlands - ranked second and fourth in the FIFA World Rankings - in the first two rounds of the knockout stage to get to the semi-finals. Meanwhile, the runner-up in Group G would be in a potential quadrant with Chile, Japan and Paraguay, who are ranked 18th, 45th and 31st respectively.
So would either Brazil or Portugal decide that it’s more advantageous to not finish first in the group? Likely not, just because they won’t know exactly how things break down as the final Group H matches will take place after the Group G matches end. However, if the schedule was reversed and Brazil or Portugal knew who their possible opponents would be, the story might be quite different. FIFA instituted simultaneous games to end each group to avoid the type of shameful match fixing seen between West Germany and Austria in 1982; perhaps it’s time to do something to avoid teams trying to lose to get a better draw in the knockout round before a credibility-robbing disaster happens.
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