I get that they’re trying to a) give teams relatively equal rest b) avoid no-game days between group stage and knockout…but many meaningless round 3 games is worse than either of those.
@AnthonyDabbundo I don’t think that it’s correct that the most likely round of 32 opponent is Bosnia/qatar winner. Is that based on the bbc draw? I think group B is the least likely group to get a third place team in of the 4 groups 2 games in.
It still seems kind of weird that all these boogereaters who went to kindergarten when I was in fifth grade are now like "Look at me, I'm 42, I do investments!"
@AnthonyDabbundo There's a FIFA financial reason why we can't have less games but there's no financial reason why we can't incentivize offensive soccer by ranking teams 1 to 32 in the knockout stage based on W-L then goal differential in the group stage.