World Cup Day 15: Goodbye Groups, Goodbye Math

What's This?

USA goalkeeper Tim Howard salutes the fans at Arena Pernambuco on June 26, 2014 in Recife, Brazil.

Image: Alex Livesey - FIFA

By Chris Taylor2014-06-27 05:18:50 UTC

If you were avidly following the USA v Germany match on social media before it happened, your head spinning with all the different possibilities of how that game might turn out and how the result of the concurrent Portugal v Ghana game might affect it, you might have at some point come across something like this:

That was about the most colorful and easily understandable representation of a numerically complex situation. Math is inherent to the group stage, and especially a team's third and final game of the group stage, where fortunes can turn on a dime. It's easy when you know how it works: three points for a win, one point for a draw, none for a loss; goal difference (goals scored minus goals conceded) as a tiebreaker, goals scored as the second tiebreaker, the little-used drawing of lots as a third tiebreaker.

See also: World Cup Day 14: Diving and Writhing

Easy when you know how — not so easy for the hordes of casual fans who cluster around televisions for a handful of games only. But don't worry, World Cup watchers, that's it for the math. From this point on we're in the much simpler knockout stage, where everything gets pretty binary. Eight games will have winners or losers, then four games, then two, then the final.

Still, can we shed a small collective tear for the passing of the group stage? Not so much for the departed teams, because as shocking as it is to see Spain, Italy, England and now Portugal and Russia among the ranks of the fallen, that only means exciting and relatively unknown teams such as Costa Rica and Algeria have risen to take their place.

No, let us weep for the passing of complex, thrilling, fateful soccer situations such as the one we had Thursday morning, when the USA played Germany and Portugal played Ghana simultaneously. At one point, with the USA a goal behind and Ghana drawing level with Portugal, the American team was literally one Ghanian goal away from elimination.

See also: Best Loss Ever: USA Advances to World Cup Knockout Round

And who should step up to save the States but Cristiano Ronaldo, last week's great American villain. Ronaldo won the game for Portugal, eliminating both teams but salvaging some of his nation's pride.

Ronaldo, hero of the USA — it's a situation not unlike the one a week ago where all of England suddenly found itself cheering for Italy, their mortal enemies of a week before. The kind of situation you only get in the group stage of the World Cup. Shifting national alliances based not on emotion, but math: how cool is that?

Over in the less exciting Group H, meanwhile, the always-favored Belgians trundled to a flawless 9-point victory in the group by defeating South Korea 1-0. That is more of an achievement than it sounds given that Belgium was down to 10 men; newcomer Steven Defour was sent off just before half time for sticking his studs into a Korean forward's ankle.

And Algeria drew with Russia to go through in second place. Russia has never looked like much of a threat in this tournament, and its highly-paid manager Fabio Capello has had even more of a disappointing World Cup managing the Russian side than he did managing England in South Africa four years ago. "All referees are against us," Capello fumed after the match.

No sir, it was the math. Just the math.

Topics: 2014 world cup, world cup, Entertainment, soccer, Sports