Which Group Is Truly The Group Of Death?
It's a World Cup tradition as time-honored as Brazil and Germany being favored to win: labelling the "Group of Death" in the group stages of the Cup.
For years, because only the Top 8 teams in the World (and in years where a sub-elite nation is hosting, only the Top 7) are seeded so that they can not be in the pool of play, the random draw would inevitably generate at least one group that had 4 highly-esteemed national sides. Because every team in the group was good-to-great, the chances for anyone (even the top-seeded team) to advance were necessarily more difficult than the chances of an average side in another group with less parity. As such, the Groups of Death often end up being among the most chaotic in group play.
Some recent examples could oft include the United States. In 2006, the Yanks had their highest pre-tournament FIFA ranking and expectations ever, but crashed out of their group in no small part because they were matched up against African champions Ghana, and two European titans, Czech Republic and Italy (the eventual Cup winner). 4 years ago, USA fans once again claimed to be drawn into a Group of Death, as they again found themselves head-to-head with bogey team Ghana again, and two European titans in Portugal and Germany (the eventual Cup winner...noticing a pattern?). Most around the world, though, thought the true 2014 Group of Death was Group D, which held three Top-15 teams in Uruguay. England, and Italy, as well as North American stalwart Costa Rica, who ended up winning the group against all odds.
This year, FIFA made a rule change that switched the pots for the World Cup Draw from being defined solely by confederation, to instead simply seeding the teams 1-32, and defining them into their four pots accordingly. Naturally, this decreased the likelihood of a Group of Death on the level we've seen in years past. Indeed, the 2018 field did not have quite the same bona fide Group of Death that 2014 did, for example. However, there were a couple candidates for the bill this year, with most pundits pointing to either Group D or Group F as the most challenging or those with the most recognizable programs.
As there has been, for the first time in many years, debate over which group deserves to be termed the Group of Death, I wanted to determine which truly is the most difficult group, as we near the end of the group stages. In my opinion, just having the biggest names and/or several highly-ranked teams isn't enough to earn the "Group of Death" moniker. For me, it's two parts: the level of each team's quality, but also the level of the group's parity. After all, how can a certain group be a Group of Death, if the range between its best team and worst team is massive? I'll give you an example. In the aforementioned 2014 tournament, most considered Italy's Group D or USA's Group G to be the Group of Death, but still others thought it was Group B, which featured the two teams that had played in the previous tournament final (Spain and The Netherlands) as well as a highly-touted Chile side. However, that group also included a very lowly-ranked Australia side, which would have been expected by NOBODY to have a chance at advancing; sure enough, the Aussies finished last in the group with 0 points and a -6 goal differential. In short, the group was not top-to-bottom competitive.
So, I've broken down this analysis into the two aspects of Challenge and Competitiveness. I should of course include the disclaimer that these measurements are based on the country's FIFA Ranking, which are undoubtedly a flawed ranking system. There's no extremely effective way to measure the quality of teams across continents, though, so it is what we've got. Let's take one more look at the teams in each group:
CHALLENGE SCORES: The "Best" Group
The groups' Challenge Ratings were determined by taking the average FIFA Rank of the 4 teams, but also the Median, in order to account for any outliers (a la 2014 Australia). The Mean and Median are then added together in order to define the final score. Keep in mind, of course, that as #1 would be the best FIFA rank, the lower the total rating, the more challenging the group is.
I don't know about you, but I was very surprised to see how the rankings panned out. Groups D and F, the most-cited Group of Death candidates came in 5th and 4th place, respectively. That is thanks mostly to a well-respected Nigeria side having a questionably low FIFA Ranking at 48, and a usually-solid South Korea side being a weaker iteration of themselves this year. One group that was never tossed around as a Group of Death was Group C, but here they sit at the top of the Challenge Ratings. Peru hasn't qualified for the World Cup in 30+ years, and Denmark hasn't qualified for the knockout stages of a major tournament since 2002, yet this month, they are ranked 11th and 12th in the World, very close behind the group's seed, France. Group E was a very close 2nd, but it's lower median pulled the rating down some; what this denotes is that there is a more noticeable break between Brazil/Switzerland and Costa Rica/Serbia, than there is a clear dividing line in Group C. Those two were a decent ways ahead of the pack, then the numbers 3 through 7 are all fairly close, with Group A, Russia's group, unsurprisingly an extremely distant last place. The hosts have impressed viewers so far with victories of 5-0 and 3-1, but considering they are playing in what may be the most weakest group in recent World Cup history, perhaps we should be hedging our esteem just a bit?
COMPETITIVE SCORES: The "Hardest" Group
The groups' Competitive Ratings were found by the distance from the best team to worst team, but also by calculating the average distance between each of the group's teams. For example, in Group B, there was a 37-spot range between its best team, Portugal (#4) and its weakest, Iran (#41). The other side of that, though, was that there was a 6-spot difference from Portugal to Spain (#10), a 27-spot difference from Spain to Morocco (#37), then a 4-spot difference from Morocco to Iran. With those 3 ranges averaged out, the mean discrepancy from team-to-team was 9.25 places in the FIFA Rankings.
Here are the groups' Competitive Ratings, ranked from #1 to #8, and again, the lower the total rating, the more parity the group has:
If you thought Group C's difficulty was a fluke in the Challenge rankings, you were wrong. It also tops our Competitive ratings, thanks to both the smallest range from best to worst (France is less than 30 spots ahead of Australia) and the smallest range in between teams (as noted above, the top 3 teams are within 5 ranks of each other). Group E is the runner-up in this category as well, having nearly the same average distance between its 4 teams (8). And, in addition, to being awful in terms of quality, Group A is also the least competitive! This is on account of Uruguay being ranked so vastly above their lower quality groupmates. In theory, La Celeste should be ROLLING through Group A, which has...sort of been the case (they've already clinched a spot in the knockout rounds, but have been less-than-convincing in two 1-0 wins).
The final "Death Ratings" were determined by averaging out the groups' Challenge Ratings and Competitive Ratings. The results of those two rankings have somewhat taken the drama out of this reveal, but it's still a surprising reveal nonetheless:
The Group Of Death Is....
Group C!
Yes, Group C, which was considered by many to be a walk in the park for one of the cup favorites, France, is actually both the most challenging AND the most competitive, according to the FIFA Rankings of all involved. As you can see from the ranking table, Groups D and F, the two most-termed as the Group of Death, don't even make the medal stand, with Brazil's Group E instead finishing a close second, and perhaps surprisingly, Portugal/Spain's Group B coming in 3rd.
Les Bleus have faced some criticism for being rather unimpressive in their two victories over Australia and Peru, but perhaps it's time we look at the side with fresh eyes; contrary to pre-tournament expectation, advancing out of Group C was always going to be a tough task. If a young France side can top the group by drawing or even defeating Denmark, they are to be commended for doing what many of their peers likely could not do: win the true Group of Death.