Looking for the Qatar football tournament’s ‘group of death’? It simply doesn’t exist any more

Nico Schlotterbeck of Germany attends the Germany Community Event with female football players of Qatar at Al Shamal Stadium on November 20, 2022 in Al Ruwais, Qatar. (Photo: Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images)

By Michael Cox for The Athletic

21 Nov 2022

Qatar 2022 doesn’t have any tightly contentious groups, indicating that the concept of a ‘group of death’ is on the way out.

Whenever the draw for the World Cup is completed, the immediate task is figuring out which is the “group of death”.

But the boring answer is that there generally isn’t one these days.

Changes to the structure of the tournament mean four genuine contenders are less likely to be grouped together.

This World Cup, however, is a slight exception. To explain why, here is a brief history of how the group of death gradually faded away.

Three factors

There are three factors at play. The first factor is expansion of the tournament.

The phrase “group of death” was first coined in 1970, when there were only 16 teams in the tournament. (From 1982 there were 24 teams, from 1998 there were 32, and from 2026 there will be 48.)

Consequently, the quality has been diluted. For this tournament, 50% of the sides wouldn’t have even qualified for the tournament if it was held when the “group of death” concept was first defined.

There is probably the same number of contenders for each World Cup; about eight to 10 sides with a genuine chance of winning the competition.

Once upon a time, they were split into four groups, then they were split into six, and now into eight. The probability of getting two — or even three — in the same group has steadily reduced.

The second factor is increased spread across different confederations. This isn’t the same as the mere expansion of the competition.

Historically, the World Cup’s genuine contenders are almost exclusively drawn from Europe and South America.

No African nation has ever reached the semifinals. No team from Oceania has ever reached the quarterfinals. Only one Asian side has ever reached the semifinals — South Korea on home soil in 2002. And only one North American side has ever reached the semifinals, the USA back in 1930.

And while the South American contingent for each tournament has roughly expanded in line with the number of nations overall, the European quota has not.

Fifa has prioritised regional representation over outright quality. This is, after all, a World Cup. But this also means the overall quality is weaker; it means Italy don’t qualify when Saudi Arabia and Tunisia do.

That’s entirely fair enough, but it’s also reasonable to say that the reigning European champions would be a more obvious candidate for any potential group of death.

Indeed, the deathliest group at a major tournament came not at a World Cup, but at Euro ’96. It featured Germany (ranked second in the world), Russia (third), Italy (seventh) and Czech Republic (10th), and it also produced the two eventual finalists.

The third factor, and perhaps the most pertinent, is the system of seeding.

Let’s go back to that first group of death in 1970. It was no coincidence that the World Cup 1970 produced that group of death, rather than 1962 or 1966.

For those two tournaments, the draw was seeded. But after no agreement could be reached about the process of seeding ahead of 1970, that draw was open.

From left: Julian Brandt, Armel Bella Kotchap, Jamal Musiala and Joshua Kimmich challenge for the ball during the Germany training session at Al-Shamal Stadium on 19 November 2022 in Al Ruwais, Qatar. (Photo: Marvin Ibo Guengoer - GES Sportfoto / Getty Images)

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The result? The two most recent winners of the competition, England and Brazil, were drawn together in the same group, along with the runners-up from 1962, Czechoslovakia.

Romania were less intimidating in terms of reputation, although they defeated Czechoslovakia, and lost to England and Brazil by only a single goal, so were hardly out of place. Fifa was determined never to let this happen again and every draw since has been seeded.

The seedings have taken various forms, but the system we became accustomed to involved Pot 1 comprising the strongest sides according to world ranking (plus the hosts), and everyone else placed into purely geographic pots (rather than seeded further according to rankings).

Therefore, it was possible for one group to contain a top seed, plus a strong European side, a strong South American side and a strong African side, even if they were all ranked in the top 16 nations at the tournament.

Nico Schlotterbeck of Germany attends the Germany Community Event with female football players of Qatar at Al-Shamal Stadium on 20 November 2022 in Al Ruwais, Qatar. (Photo: Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images)

World ranking trumps geography

That system was used until 2014. From 2018, things changed. Now the draw is seeded throughout, and the pots are determined according to world ranking rather than according to geography.

That meant the deathliest possible group for World Cup 2018 was significantly less deathly than in previous years. In fact, the third-strongest side in the deathliest possible group was weaker than the fourth-strongest side from the deathliest possible groups at previous tournaments, according to the world rankings.

There is a further complication with World Cup 2022, however.

Because some qualification matches were delayed due to the pandemic — and war delayed Ukraine’s play-off matches against Scotland and Wales — the draw for World Cup 2022 took place before we knew the identity of three teams as they hadn’t played their play-off matches.

Therefore, those play-off sides were placed into Pot 4, regardless of their rankings.

This was particularly relevant in the case of Wales, which defeated Ukraine to secure their place. Had that play-off taken place before the draw, Wales’ ranking of 18 would have made them a Pot 3 side (and, indeed, a Pot 2 side if it wasn’t for 51st-ranked hosts Qatar automatically being in Pot 1). Instead, they were in Pot 4.

So whichever group Wales was drawn into would be tougher than Fifa had originally envisaged. They were drawn alongside England (ranked fifth), USA (15th) and Iran (21st).

Which might not be overwhelmingly deathly compared with 1970, for example, but it’s actually much stronger than anything four years ago — and that’s without considering the rivalry between England and Wales and tension between USA and Iran.

Whether you consider that a group of death is a matter of opinion. But it’s probably more deathly than any World Cup group we’ll see again because of the expansion to a 48-team World Cup from 2026, combined with increased geographical spread.

Fifa intends to adjust for the 48-team tournament by using 16 groups of three, with two sides progressing to the knockout stage. That has two implications for potential groups of death.

First, on the (extremely unlikely) assumption that the tournament comprises the 48 highest-ranked sides in the world and the draw is seeded all the way through, each group would contain a side ranked 33rd or below.

In all probability, once you account for quotas from each confederation, it seems more likely that the average ranking of the Pot 3 sides will be in the 50s or 60s.

Second, and maybe more significantly, when two out of three sides progress from each group, things are less deathly. A 67% chance of progression simply doesn’t feel overwhelmingly perilous. By 2026, the concept of the group of death will be definitively dead. DM

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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Three factors

World ranking trumps geography