Costa Rica defeated New Zealand to clinch the last World Cup spot on Tuesday. Now that the World Cup qualifiers are complete, all the 32 teams and the groups for this year’s World Cup are confirmed.
Fans of the qualified teams have already begun analysing their team’s chances of progressing to the next stage from their groups.
At every FIFA World Cup in recent times, one group is categorized as the ‘group of death’ by the pundits. While all the groups are challenging, some teams get the short straw and land in a group of equally competitive teams. This group that appears more competitive than the others is dubbed as the ‘group of death’.
At this year’s world cup there is no obvious ‘group of death’. However, Group E appears to be the trickiest groups. Group E has two former world champions from Europe, Germany and Spain. While Germany has lifted the World Cup four times (2014, 1990, 1974, 1954), Spain became the world champions in 2010. Group E also features one of the strongest Asian teams, Japan.
While the two European giants will be the favourites of bookmakers to go all the way, Germany and Spain suffered group stage exits in 2018 and 2014 respectively. Both Germany and Spain wouldn’t want to take Japan lightly who finished on top of their group in the World Cup qualifiers.
The plucky Japanese team can cause plenty of headaches for the other three teams in the group. Costa Rica is the fourth team that has been drawn in Group E. Costa Rica have a history of World Cup upsets. Even though La Sele will be the underdogs, they can cause an upset against the strongest of teams on their day.
It is worth noting that Costa Rica came through another group of death in the 2014 World Cup. Costa Rica finished on top of the group which also had England, Italy and Uruguay.
Group G is another competitive group which has Brazil, Cameroon, Serbia and Switzerland. While Brazil is one of the teams expected to go deep in the tournament, Serbia is also a very strong team and did not lose a single match at the World Cup qualifiers.
Switzerland also went through their World Cup qualification campaign without losing a single game and finished at the top of a group that included Euro 2021 winners Italy.
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