Group of death


A group of death in a multi-stage tournament is a group which is unusually competitive, because the number of strong competitors in the group is greater than the number of qualifying places available for the next phase of the tournament. Thus, in the group phase, one or more strong competitors in the "group of death" will necessarily be eliminated, who would otherwise have been expected to progress further in the tournament. The informal term was first used for groups in the FIFA World Cup finals. It is now also used in other association football tournaments and other sports.
After the draw for a tournament has been made, debates often arise about which of the preliminary groups is "the" group of death. This happens for multiple reasons: in part, from more general debates about the relative strengths of the various competitors; but, additionally, because there is no exact definition of the term "group of death". Sometimes, the term simply signifies a group with only the strongest competitors, all of which are potential winners of the tournament, implying there is always precisely one such group; other definitions allow for multiple groups of death or for none at all.
The term is sometimes derided as a purely journalistic invention, a cliché or oversimplification based entirely on the unsportsmanlike notion that outcomes of such tournaments are largely predictable and that there are always underdogs, dark horses and s.

Origin

The term "group of death" was coined by Mexican journalists for Group 3 of the 1970 FIFA World Cup. This featured reigning champions England, favourites and eventual champions Brazil, 1962 runners-up Czechoslovakia and Romania.
It was used again in Mexico for the second-phase Group C in the 1982 World Cup in Spain. This grouped defending champions Argentina, the eventual champions Italy and Brazil. In 2007, The Guardian called this the deadliest-ever Group of Death.
It was popularized after the draw for the 1986 World Cup, when Uruguay manager Omar Borrás so described Group E, which included Uruguay, West Germany, Denmark and Scotland. As with the 1970 group, this was the only one with all four teams from Europe and South America. The label was widely repeated by the English-language media. By the 1986 tournament rules, two or three of the four teams in each group would progress to the knockout phase; in the event, Scotland was the only team not to qualify from the prototypical "group of death". Uruguay were criticized for persistent foul play in the decisive match with Scotland; Borrás was suspended for retorting, "The Group of Death? Yes, there was a murderer on the field today. The referee."

Seedings

Tournaments are often seeded to provide an even distribution of strong and weak competitors across all preliminary groups. However, in association football, :Category:Association football rankings|the ranking methods used for seeding may be crude. In the World Cup, until 2018 the usual strategy was for each group to contain one seeded team and three unseeded teams, with the unseeded teams picked from separate regional confederations. Some North American, African and Asian teams are significantly stronger than others. The net result was that some groups may have had stronger teams than others. From the 2018 edition onwards this system has been changed, with a distribution of teams based on the FIFA World Rankings introduced, but with continental limitations still to be retained.
The reigning champion and the host nation or nations are traditionally among the seeds. In the case of UEFA Euro 2008, this meant three of the four seeds were among the weakest teams in the tournament: hosts Austria and Switzerland, and surprise 2004 champions Greece. 2006 World Cup finalists France and Italy were unseeded and ended up in Group C with Netherlands and Romania. This was considered a "group of death" with Romania as underdogs against three of Europe's top sides.
Even in competitions that give no seeding advantage to hosts or defending champions, "group of death" scenarios can still emerge. For example, the draw for the pools of the Rugby World Cup primarily uses teams' positions in the World Rugby Rankings to determine placement in the "pots" for the draw. However, the draw has traditionally been held nearly three years before the competition. For example, the pool draw for the 2015 Rugby World Cup was held in December 2012. This led to the host team, England, being drawn into a pool that included traditional powers Australia and Wales, with only two teams able to advance to the knockout stage. Because Wales had gone winless in their November 2012 Tests, they had dropped to ninth in the rankings at the time of the draw. Australia were third and England fifth at the time, placing all three teams into separate pots. In August 2015, World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper told the Press Association that the body was seriously considering rescheduling the draw for future World Cups to be much closer in time to the competition. However, this change could not be implemented for the 2019 Rugby World Cup mainly because of the potential for ticketing clashes with the 2020 Summer Olympics, since Japan will host both events.

Debates and definitions

In the FIFA World Cup tournament proper, the UEFA European Championship and the UEFA Champions League, each preliminary group has four teams, two of which qualify for the knockout phase. Some sources imply all four teams must be in contention for a "group of death"; others allow for three teams fighting for two places, with one underdog making up the numbers. In the latter case, the term gains an additional facet from the expected "death" of the weak team: Ally McCoist and the Glasgow Herald described Euro 1992 Group B as the "Group of Certain Death" because Scotland were grouped with the Netherlands, Germany and the CIS. More extreme still, Ian Paul suggested semi-final Group B of the 1992–93 UEFA Champions League was a "group of death" for three of the four teams, with Milan almost sure to top the group and reach the final.
In the case of UEFA qualifying tournaments, groups have deeper seeding and always feature some weaker teams. For example, Qualifying Group B for Euro 2008 was dubbed the "group of death" in Scotland because Scotland were drawn against Italy, France and Ukraine, respectively champion, finalist, and quarter-finalist at the 2006 World Cup. The presence in the group of Lithuania, Georgia and the Faroe Islands did not contribute to the label.
It is often assumed that a tournament has precisely one Group of Death. In the 1994 World Cup, Group E was often given the label; Brazil head coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said it was Group B ; some reporters suggested both were "groups of death".
On the other hand, after the draw for the 2010 World Cup finals, some commentators said there was no group of death. Sports Illustrated said Group G was the group of death because it had two of the top five nations in the FIFA World Rankings, Brazil and Portugal, as well as the second-ranked African team, Ivory Coast; it described fourth team North Korea as "unenviable underdog". On the other hand, Andrew Downie of the Christian Science Monitor said, "No self-respecting Group of Death would be caught dead with North Korea in it... As far as I'm concerned, there is no Group of Death in this World Cup." Spain manager Vicente del Bosque said of 2014 World Cup Group B, "We have to define it as complicated but I don't believe this is the Group of Death. There are others very hard. But our group is difficult."
The "Group of Death" may simply be the one with the strongest teams, or the most strong teams. Using FIFA World Rankings as a measure of the strength of the teams, The Guardian calculated in 2007 that the strongest "Group of Death" was Euro 1996 Group C. The teams were Germany, Russia, Italy and the Czech Republic. This record was exceeded by the May 2012 rankings for Euro 2012 Group B, with Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark, but not the June rankings immediately before the tournament In women's football, 2007 World Cup Group B featured three of the top five teams in the FIFA Women's World Rankings entering the tournament – the United States, Sweden and North Korea – with Nigeria being the "minnows".
There may be an emphasis on the "group of death" having a tight finish, with all four teams in contention. This was the case in Group F of the 1990 World Cup, in which five of the six matches were drawn, and in Group E of the 1994 World Cup, when all four teams finished level on points and goal difference.
However, the label is usually applied in anticipation of the tournament rather than in retrospect. Simon Burnton comments, "Inevitably, one of the big teams involved gets so scared about being in the Group of Death that they play really badly, meaning not only that they go home in disappointment and disgrace, but that the group turns out not to be so very troublesome after all.". David Lacey said, "Draws may nominate a group of death but results decide its real mortality rating. France and Argentina found this out in Japan." Lacey also said, "There are groups of death and groups of death wishes. In Euro 2000 Group D looked daunting but was shrugged aside by the Netherlands, the co-hosts, and France, the eventual champions, with the Czechs, runners-up in 1996, and the Danes, winners in 1992, offering scant resistance. Group A turned out to be the killer."
Lack of consensus about which is the group of death can fuel debates among fans and journalists. In the 2002 World Cup, The Guardian called Group F "the group of death" and Group E "the other Group of Death". South Koreans called Group D the "Real Group of Death". In the 2006 World Cup, both Group C and Group E were nominated as "group of death". In the 2014 World Cup, three groups were acknowledged in the media as "group of death": Group B, Group D, and Group G ; Group G was considered especially difficult in the U.S., as they had been eliminated by its "weakest" team, Ghana, in each of the past two tournaments. In the 2018 World Cup, there were three groups that were considered groups of death: Group E, Group F and Group D.
In the 2017–18 UEFA Champions League group stage, Group H and in the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League group stage, Group F was considered "the group of death".
In the 1998-99 UEFA Champions League group stage there were six groups which all of them contained four teams, but only the group winners and the two second-placed teams with the best records would qualify for the next round. In that season, Group C and Group D could well be considered group of deaths. In the event, those groups were the two whose second-placed teams would go on to have the best records among second-placed teams, and the top two teams of Group D, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, would actually go on to contest the final (ironically in the stadium of the "big" eliminated team of the group, the Camp Nou where FC Barcelona play.
Fans may describe as the "group of death" any tough group which contains their favoured team. George Vecsey says, "In soccer, every nation always thinks it has been stiffed into the toughest pool, the Group of Death." In this sense, David Warren comments that a "top seeding in a finals group gives a country a good chance to advance and the best chance to avoid a so-called group of death".

Other sports

The label "group of death" has been used in other sports than association football; for example:
;Basketball: 1994 FIBA World Championship Group A; 2010 NCAA Men's Midwest Regional; 2014 NCAA Men's Midwest Regional ; 2016 NCAA Men's East Regional; 2019 FIBA World Cup Group H
;Rugby union: 1995 World Cup Pool B; 2001–02 Heineken Cup Pool 6; 2003 World Cup Group A; 2011-12 Heineken Cup Pool 3 ; 2007 World Cup Pool D; 2011 Rugby World Cup Pool B; 2015 Rugby World Cup Pool A ; 2019 Rugby World Cup Pool C
;Paralympic association football: 2012 Summer Paralympics 7-a-side Group B; 2016 Summer Paralympics 7-a-side Group A; 2016 Summer Paralympics 5-a-side Group B
;Rugby league: 1995 World Cup Group 3; 2008 World Cup Group A
;Cricket: 2008 Twenty20 Cup North Division; 2009 World Twenty20 Group C;, 2012 World Twenty20 Super8 - Group 2
;Ice hockey: 2010 Olympic men's qualifying group G.

Variants

Variant definitions

"Group of death" has occasionally been used to characterise a qualifying group in some other way. The southern section preliminary round Group 5 of the 1990-91 Leyland DAF Cup had lowly teams replaying poorly-attended matches; after many postponements, Robert Pryce commented: "The Leyland Daf Cup Southern Section preliminary round's Group of Death has achieved almost total rigor mortis."
Scotland manager Andy Roxburgh described Euro 1992 qualifying Group 2 as a "group of death" in a different sense because of the lack of a glamorous opponent "to get people out of the house and into Hampden Park." The group combined Bulgaria, Romania, San Marino, Scotland, and Switzerland.
The Asian final qualifying group for the 1994 World Cup featured two sets of militantly hostile neighbours: Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia; and North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. This was called the "group of death" for black humour.
A similar quip was made of the UEFA qualifying group 1 for the 1998 World Cup:

Related terms

Occasionally, alternatives to "group of death" are proffered. Javier Clemente said of 1998 World Cup Group D, "This is not the group of death, as some people have said. It is the group of heart attacks" John Harrell said of 1994 World Cup Group E, "The characterization might be a bit harsh. Perhaps the 'Group of Surprises' is a better term."
Sometimes the excitement of a close contest between high-quality teams has suggested the positive "group of life" is more appropriate than "group of death". Of 2002 World Cup Group F, Paul Wilson said, "England's group is not so much the group of death as the group of life, for few others promise any drama" Of 2006 World Cup Group C, Gary Lineker said after Argentina's demolition of Serbia and Montenegro, "Argentina produced one of the great performances in recent World Cup history. The group of death has become the group of life."
However, "Group of Life" has also been used as the opposite of "Group of Death", to mean an easy group with weak teams: examples include 2002 World Cup Group H; 2006 World Cup UEFA qualifying Group 6; 2006 World Cup Group D; 2010 World Cup Group C; and 2018 World Cup Group A. Chuck Culpepper wrote of 2006 World Cup Group B, 'If each World Cup draw brings a "Group of Death," anointed for its incomparable rigor among the eight groups, England 2006 surely occupies the Group of Life, or the Group of Tranquillity, or the Group of So Few Worries We Spent All Day Yesterday Following the Metatarsal Melodrama Rather Than Worry About Trinidad and Tobago.' Radio Télévision Suisse said Switzerland was "far from being in a group of 'death'" when drawn in 2014 World Cup Group E. Polish-speaking media tend to refer to relatively tough and forgiving groups as grupa śmierci and grupa marzeń respectively.
1986 World Cup Group F, with two goals in the first four games combined, was dubbed the "Group of Sleep".
Before the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament draw, financial writer Chris Sloley coined the term "Group of Debt" for a possible group comprising PIIGS indebted countries; in the event, three of these were grouped together with Croatia in Group C, while Greece and Portugal were in other groups.
"Group of Champions" has been used in the UEFA Champions League both for groups where all teams are former champions of that competition, and for groups where all teams are reigning domestic champions.