Some of these are no longer possible in this tournament, e.g. 3 3 3 3, which requires all games in a group to be drawn.
It is possible to qualify from a group with only two points, if one team wins all its games and the other three games are drawn, which could still happen in Argentina’s and Belgium’s groups.
There are also a few ways to qualify with only three points.
Nice one, very interesting. In particular, it seems surprising that it is possible to not qualify on 5 or even 6 points, but both of these only have one possible permutation. You can’t even say that two wins guarantees qualification, as the 6 6 6 0 permutation involves everyone beating one team, with the other three teams all beating each other. I’m pretty sure that neither the 5 5 5 0 nor the 6 6 6 0 scenarios have ever occurred in World Cups (or Euros), so historically 5 points have always been enough.
Where Argentina won their first two games, but ended 3rd in the group behind Nigeria and Bulgaria. No points for Greece (might well be the same this year).
Group F in the same world cup:
Netherlands and Saudi Arabia progress; Belgium doesn’t with the same number of points and Morocco got nothin.
With you on Nigeria/Iran. There were two microseconds of action interspersed among 95 minutes of snooze. I really hope that wasn’t the first match any casual fan watched, or they’ll probably never watch again.
I actually think Mexico/Brazil was the best game of the tournament so far. The antithesis of the other nil-nil draw.
I like Ghana’s goal against the US for goal of the tournament-so-far.
Van Persie’s goal was spectacular but I marked it down a little for degree of difficulty; he was completely unmarked and it looked a bit harder than it really was (if you watch carefully you’ll see he doesn’t leave his feet until after he heads the ball.)
The US and Russia are both most likely to advance as second place teams. The US’s most likely second round opponent is Belgium, which is a dicier prospect. Although not quite as bad as Russia likely getting Germany.
Here is a list of the number of times each combination of points has actually occurred, since 1994 (when international football introduced 3 points for a win), and taking into account both men’s and women’s versions of the following tournaments:
The discussion about various group permutations brings me to something I was wondering about the other day.
Back in Euro 2004, the joke was that the Greeks were trying to become the first team to win a major international tournament without scoring a goal. Just a joke, of course, but it got me to wondering if such a feat is even possible, excluding goals scored in penalty shoot outs.
So the scenario I came up with was that in the group stage, all the games end in 0-0 draws. That leaves the four teams level on three points, same GD, same goals for and against, and the same head-to-head record. Lots are drawn. Our hypothetical team advances to the knockout stages, where every game ends 0-0 after 120 minutes and they advance via PKs, eventually winning the final in that manner.