With the FIFA World Cup group stage coming to an end with the Group G games, Qatar 2022 has defied predictions, with several illustrious teams stumbling early.
This is the first time since the 1994 Football World Cup (a 24-team tournament) that there are no teams with all-win records after the group stage.
Brazil had the last chance among the 32 teams (the 32-team format was introduced in 1998) in Qatar to achieve an all-win qualification to the round of 16, but lost to Cameroon 1-0 in its last group game on November 3.
This is also only the fourth time it has happened in the history of the tournament, with the other years being 1994, 1962 and 1958. Incidentally, in all of the aforementioned years, Brazil went on to win the tournament.
This statistic throws light on the unpredictable nature of the competition, with four-time champion Germany and 2010 winner Spain losing to Japan, and two-time winner Argentina stumbling against Saudi Arabia. Belgium, which finished third in 2018, lost to Morocco and went out in the group stage, along with the Germans.
Qatar 2022 also witnessed only five teams — Netherlands, USA, England, Croatia and Morocco — emerge out of the group stage unbeaten. This is the lowest number of teams undefeated in the group stage since the 32-team format started.
The record for most teams remaining unbeaten after the group stage stands at 12. This happened in the 1998 and 2002 editions.
The only time every group in a FIFA World Cup had a team with an all-win record was in the first World Cup in 1930, when there were four such teams in each of the groups.
This was the first World Cup in 20 years to have group winners from four different confederations. (AFC - Japan; UEFA - Netherlands, England, France and Portugal; CONMEBOL - Brazil and Argentina; AFCON - Morocco). The two previous time this happened was in 1986 and 2002.
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