While the knockout stage of the World Cup is a straightforward setup (single elimination, extra time and penalties), the group stage can get awfully complicated when it comes to determining the teams that’ll move on. And often times, the three round-robin matches don’t give us a clear top two for each group.
That’s where tiebreakers come into play.
In the group stage, each team plays a match against their fellow groupmates with three points in the standings for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. That means the slightest statistical difference can be what sends a team to the knockout round and the other home disappointed. And trust me, the tiebreakers become weirder the deeper the process gets.
Let’s break down how it works.
1. Goal differential
The first tiebreaker is simple enough. You subtract goals scored against goals allowed, and the team with the better differential moves on. For example, the U.S. finished second in the group in 2014 by having an even goal differential compared to Portugal’s -3. Both teams had a 1-1-1 record in the group.
Odds are you’ll see this tiebreaker come into play at the World Cup in Qatar.
2. Goals scored
If teams are tied in points and goal differential, FIFA then continues to total goals scored to break the tie. Of course, this tiebreaker overlooks conceded goals, but FIFA wants teams to put the ball in the net. So that gets preference.
3. Head-to-head performance
If it’s a two-way tie, the winner of the head-to-head match moves on. If that head-to-head match was a tie, we’ll proceed to tiebreaker No. 6. And it’s a wild one.
If we’re looking at a three-way tie at this point, the standings are recalculated to just the matches involving the tied teams. The team at the top of that table moves on. If it’s *still* a tie, we move on to the next tiebreaker.
4. Goal differential in matches between tied teams
This tiebreaker only works for a three-way tie because, well, the winner of a head-to-head match in a two-way tie would naturally have the better differential. So again, this tiebreaker reduces the standings to just the matches involving the three tied teams. The team with the best goal differential from those games moves on.
5. Goals scored in matches between the tied teams
If the three teams somehow had the same goal differentials in all the head-to-head matches, the team that scored the most goals in those matches between the tied teams will move on. It’s incredibly rare for a three-way tie to get beyond this point.
6. Fair Play tiebreaker
Though this is super rare, we’ve seen this tiebreaker come into play recently in two-way ties. Basically, if all the other tiebreakers are exhausted without a winner, the team with the better disciplinary record in the group stage moves on.
In 2018, Japan advanced to the Round of 16 — edging out Senegal — only because Senegal picked up two more yellow cards than Japan.
The Fair Play system also applies here if three teams make it through all the previous tiebreakers.
It’s really a terrible way to break a tie because it values subjective officiating decisions over actual on-field performance.
7. LOL drawing lots
At this point, FIFA has run out of ideas even though there are other ways that would make sense (least goals conceded, saves, goals from open play). That lack of imagination would bring us to a random drawing where the organizing committee would draw a team from a bowl.
We haven’t seen this happen in the World Cup, but the Japan-Senegal situation in 2018 was already too close for comfort. I’d rather see the two teams have an impromptu penalty shootout than this.
You cannot have a tiebreaker that is literally left to chance, and FIFA doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to integrity. Let’s hope we never have this drawing take place.
