World Cup Basics Part 2

Germany lifting the trophy in 2014

The World Cup kicks off on June 14th at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow with a match between Russia and Saudi Arabia.  One month and one day later, at the same stadium, the championship match will be played and one very happy national team will lift the trophy.  Much more importantly one of you will also be named the BISERGS for 2018 on the same day.  Before that happens 64 games will be played in 12 different stadiums across Russia. 

The Groups

Diego Maradona picks
a country out of the bowl

Last year on December 1st, the 32 nations were divided into 8 groups of 4 in what is called the 'draw'.  It is a complicated system, but basically it is designed to get a lot of media attention and let old World Cup heroes wear tuxedos and pull pieces of paper out of pretty glass bowls.  If you really want to understand how it all worked, check out the video in this link.  In theory, the process creates balanced groups and keeps the strongest teams separated until the later rounds of the tournament, but there are always some groups that seem very weak with few strong teams and others that are much more difficult.  The hardest group always gets the label 'group of death.' Most consider Group A to be the easiest this summer while Group F is this year's group of death.  *Pro tip:  The most successful BISERGSers keep these groups in mind when making decisions about team preferences for the draft.  A mediocre team in a weak group can score a lot of BISERGS points while a stronger team in the group of death may leave the tournament without scoring any points for their BISERGS owners.

The Group Phase

From June 14th to June 28th, the World Cup essentially consists of eight different mini-leagues, where each team plays one match against every other teams in their groups.  Group standings are kept with teams getting three points for a victory, one point for a draw and zero points if they lose.  At the end of the group phase the top two teams in each group qualify for the knockout round and the bottom two teams go home.  If two or more teams end the group phase tied with the same number of points, there are various tiebreakers that reward teams for having greater margins of victory and scoring more goals.

The Knockout Phase

In the knockout phase, the 16 remaining teams get paired off.  The group winners play against the second place finisher from a different group in the round of 16.  The winners advances and the losers goes home leaving eight teams that will compete in the quarter-finals.  If the score is tied at the end of the 90 minute match, 30 minutes of additional time are played to determine the winner.  If the score is tied after the extra time, then the winner is determined by a penalty shootout.  The knockout phase has four rounds with the final round being the championship match.  There is a third place game for the losers of the two semifinal matches, but it is rarely worth watching as both teams are demoralized from missing their chances at glory and the effort the teams put in is understandably very low.

BISERGS Scoring

After the draft on June 10th, you will know which four teams will lead you to BISERGS glory.  Every time one of your teams plays, you will be able to earn BISERGS points.  In the Group Phase and the round of 16, if your team wins you get three points, if your team draws you get one point and if your team loses you don't score any points.  You will also be given 1/2 a point for every goal your teams score but you will lose 1/4 point for goals your teams allow.  As the tournament continues to the quarter-finals, everything is worth 1.5 times the group phase.  The semi-final is worth double points and the championship match is worth triple points, meaning the World Cup winner scores 12 points for their owners plus 1 1/2 points for every goal scored.  The third place match is valued at the same level as the group phase.  There are special scoring rules for games that are decided by penalty kicks, but you can read about those on this website's FAQ page.  It is possible to win the BISERGS even if one of your teams doesn't win the World Cup.  Getting all four teams out of the group phase and into the knockout phase is a huge advantage that is hard for other BISERGSers to overcome, but with the championship match worth triple points, it really helps to pick the winner.