How does the World Cup work?

With the increase in media coverage over the past few days, I have seen an up tick in traffic. Since some of the folks hitting this blog might be a little green to soccer, I thought I would take a moment to answer a basic question I’ve heard asked a few times (by that I mean people searching google for the information).

How does the World Cup work?

There are 32-national teams in the 2006 World Cup. There are two phases in the World Cup. Phase 1 is the group phase while Phase 2 is the knockout phase.

Phase 1 – Group phase

The 32-teams have been divided into 8 groups of four teams each. These groups are labeled A-H.

All four teams in each group play each other once. Think of this as the regular season in basketball or baseball. Teams are award 3-points for a win and 1-point for a tie.

The two teams with the most points are the end of the group phase move on to the second phase. (see example below)

Phase 2 – Knockout phase

The knockout phase contains the top 2 teams from each of the 8 groups. These teams are seeded and then play a winner take all playoff. This is just like college basketball’s NCAA Championship or the American football playoffs.

In knockout games, there obviously cannot be any ties. If a game is tied after the 90-minutes of regular time, two 15-minute overtime periods will be played. Both overtime periods will be played even if a team scores a goal (there is no golden goal).

If the game is still tied after the extra 30-minutes, it moves to penalty kicks. Each team will take 5-shots. If one team gets more of these 5 then the other, they win. If they are tied after 5 shots, the game goes to a one shot system. If one team misses a shot while the other makes it, the game is over.

The 16 teams go down to 8 then to 4 then to the championship (there is also a third place game played by the teams who lost in the final 4). The winner of the championship game wins the cup.

I hope this helps explain how all this works.

Here is an example of the group phase:

Group A – Germany, Costa Rica, Poland, Ecuador.
Germany 3-1 Costa Rica (Germany gets 3 points)
Poland 2-0 Ecuador (Poland gets 3 points)

Costa Rica 1-1 Ecuador (both teams get 1 point)
Germany 2-0 Poland (Germany gets 3 points)

Costa Rica 2-2 Poland (both teams get 1 point)
Germany 1-1 Ecuador (both teams get 1 point)

Final Group table
Germany – 7points
Poland – 4 points
Costa Rica – 2 points
Ecuador – 2 points

Germany and Poland move on to the second phase.

If teams are tied on points, then you look at who won the game between the two tied teams. If neither team won, then you look at goal difference (number of goals they scored minus the number of goals other teams scored against them). The team with the best goal difference advances. If they are still tied, the team the scored the most goals during all of their group play advances.