By the time England and Belgium meet Thursday afternoon to determine the winner of Group G, the other 14 teams in the World Cup knockout round will be set. England and Belgium will each know what its two potential paths to the final look like—whether it will face Colombia, Senegal, or Japan if it comes in first or second in the group, and who will lie in wait should it advance to the quarterfinals and beyond. And if each team is looking with a clear, impartial eye, then it will know what it has to do: Give it very little. Leave none of it out on the field. Do everything in its power to lose. Advertisement Belgium and England are both guaranteed to advance. All that remains to be determined is if they advance as a winner or a runner-up. They are tied on points, goal difference, and goals scored, the first three methods the World Cup uses to determine placement within a group. Should they draw, the tiebreaker will come down to FIFA’s fair play system, which penalizes teams for yellow and red cards. Should that finish in a tie, they draw lots. Advertisement Advertisement However it is determined, the winner of the group will play the second-place team from Group H, which plays its final games Thursday morning, and the runner-up will play the Group H winner. As it stands, these could be any of Japan, Senegal or Colombia, depending on how those results shake out. If getting to the quarterfinals is the goal, then the best option would be trying to avoid Colombia, generally considered the strongest of those teams. [Update, June 28, 12:30 p.m.: Colombia won Group H with Japan finishing runner-up. That means whoever finishes top of the group between England and Belgium will play Japan in the knockout round while the second-place winner will take on Colombia.] Advertisement But it’s after the Round of 16 that the two options diverge most wildly. The two halves of the World Cup bracket are wildly imbalanced. Many of the pre-tournament favorites have fallen: Argentina squeaked into the knockout stage as Group D runner-up to Croatia. Defending champion Germany couldn’t even manage that. Right now, the bottom half of the bracket consists of an unconvincing Spain, host Russia, and the four European teams—Croatia, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden—that finished second in their qualifying groups and won playoffs to get into the World Cup. Advertisement That’s where the team that loses tomorrow will go, into a magical fantasy world where it plays one of Switzerland and Sweden for a spot in the World Cup semifinals. The winner of Thursday’s game, by contrast, could get Brazil in the quarterfinals. There are no sure things in knockout tournaments, and certainly not in this World Cup, but if you have the option to let somebody else handle Brazil, you let somebody else handle Brazil. Compared to the Colombia-Brazil-France gauntlet that could be looming on one side, getting Japan-Sweden-Spain is like running through one of the paper barriers that doesn’t have a giant muscle guy behind it on American Gladiators. Advertisement This could lead to some fascinating tanking strategies in the England-Belgium game. Two heavily-changed teams hacking each other down at every opportunity to chip away at their FIFA fair play score. Belgium playing tiki-taka to keep the ball away from an England team that wants to score into its own net. Both teams lining up to defend the other team’s goal. If you thought you understood the offside rule before, just try to consider the implications here, where any pass “backwards” to your own goalkeeper would be a violation. Advertisement This being a universe of infinite possibilities, and FIFA even more so, this isn’t the first time international teams have been incentivized to score own goals. Granted, the most notable prior occurrence came during a qualification match for the 1994 Caribbean Cup between Barbados and Grenada, where a strange variant of the golden goal rule led to both teams attempting to score own goals in the final minutes to ensure or prevent the game from going to extra time. One imagines the Barbadian press took it better than the English media will if one of their players scores a purposeful own goal. Advertisement But wait, there’s another wrinkle. Harry Kane is currently the World Cup’s top scorer. He wants to start Thursday so he can continue adding to his tally. His closest competition is Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku, who we already know is missing the game with an “injury.” Kane’s incentives could perversely line up quite nicely with Belgium’s, which, depending on how perversely, could put in jeopardy both Just Fontaine’s record for goals in a single World Cup and Miroslav Klose’s record for the highest overall total. Or it could lead to him trying to score on his own defenders. Unfortunately, their senses of decorum and fear of karmic retribution will likely keep England and Belgium from going all out in their pursuit of defeat. If one team does tank openly, then you can bet their tanking will be blamed whenever they get knocked out. But imagine if neither team loses. They’ll be on opposite sides of the bracket. We could get a rematch in the final with all of the twisted incentives swept away. Should that happen, they’ll know what they have to do. Maybe.<doc-sep>Well, the match will still decide the top two spots in Group G, just not in the manner we’d hoped. With both teams safely through to the round of 16, the stakes are far, far lower. To further diminish the potential entertainment value, both England and Belgium will likely be eyeing second place. Why? Just look at the bracket. The winner of Group G has a route to the finals that includes Brazil or Mexico in the quarterfinals then either Uruguay, Portugal, France or Argentina in the semifinals. Yeah, no thanks. Meanwhile, the Group G runner-up faces either Sweden or Switzerland in the quarterfinals and then either Spain, Russia, Croatia or Denmark in the semifinals — a high-end vacation by comparison.<doc-sep>
The final matchday of Group G likely won’t match the drama of Germany’s shocking exit and Sweden’s dominant triumph over Mexico, as both Belgium and England have already qualified for the Round of 16 by winning their first two games of group play. Instead, Belgium and England will take the field Thursday with the rest of the World Cup bracket already filled out, meaning each team will already know their potential opponent based on the result the group. Belgium and England have been two of the most impressive teams at the 2018 World Cup thus far, though they haven’t exactly faced tough competition as of yet. Both sides have a +6 goal difference advantage, and each team has scored eight goals over their first two games. The winner of Group G will face the runner up of Group H. Poland has been eliminated already, so Colombia, Japan and Senegal will fill out the top spots in the group. England and Belgium would both be favored to beat any of those teams, and while you can’t overlook any opponent at the World Cup (just ask Germany), the current World Cup bracket may not favor the top team in Group G. The winner of Group G, either England or Belgium, faces a potential quarterfinal matchup with Brazil, and a semifinal matchup with either France, Portgual, Argentina or Uruguay. France would be favored to make it to the semifinals over the other three teams, and while coach Didier Deschamps has faced fierce criticism over his tactical decisions, France was a popular pre-tournament pick to lift the World Cup at the end of the tournament. The other side of the bracket, though, could be a bit easier for the runner-up in Group G thanks to Germany’s collapse. After taking on the winner of Group H, a quarterfinal matchup with Sweden or Switzerland awaits, and potentially Spain or Croatia in the semifinal. Facing Spain or France for the right to play in the World Cup final would be considered a toss-up by some, but avoiding a quarterfinal clash with Brazil could be a huge boon to either Belgium or England’s World Cup hopes. Then again, Mexico could topple Brazil in the Round of 16. Stranger things have happened already at this tournament.