Copy linkFacebookXPinterestEmailShare this article 0Join the conversationFollow usAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleNewsletterSubscribe to our newsletterIts all over bar the shouting. Senegals 5-0 win over Iraq in Toronto on Friday was the result that dropped Scotland out of the top eight third-placed teams, shifting them from theoretically in World Cup 2026 to theoretically out of it.Scotland have no control over what happens now. Theyve been relying on results above and below them in the third-placed ranking since full-time against Brazil, knowing they conceded too many in that match and scored too few in their only win against Haiti.There will be teams that go through with three points, but Scotlands group stage goal difference left them vulnerable. Senegals win took them past South Korea, too. Like Scotland, their hopes are winking out in the dusk of the group stage.The World Cup draw puts teams at a disadvantage before a ball is kickedExpanding the World Cup to 48 teams has various consequences. One of the most important is that 48 teams divided into groups of four amounts to 12 groups. Another is that 24 or 36 teams cant populate a round of 32 or 16 without serious compromise.The inelegant solution, itself fraught with widely documented issues, is to send the top two teams from each group through and rank the 12 third-placed teams to identify the other eight teams to make up the 32. You may like Are Scotland out of the World Cup? Which third-placed teams go through from the World Cup group stage? Could Algeria and Austria play for a draw to knock Scotland out of the World Cup? Every team knows the deal at the outset so scandalous it is not, but the effect of putting some third-placed teams through and knocking others out is that there is cross-contamination of groups and, consequently, a clear competitive difference between teams whose records are directly compared.Its summed up thus: Senegal won 5-0 to bump Scotland out of the top eight on goal difference two days after Scotland had a chance to do anything about it.Get FourFourTwo NewsletterThe best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Theres no sense in looking for excuses for Steve Clarkes team. They left themselves in that position, and nobody else is to blame for it, but their example does highlight an inequity in a competition thats supposed to be pure.The only third-placed teams with three points in the completed first half of the group stage Groups A to F are South Korea in Group A and Scotland in Group C.Bosnia and Herzegovina, Paraguay, Ecuador and Sweden all collected four points to avoid the silent impurity of the format. What to read next Why the World Cups head-to-head tiebreaker is such a big problem Can Scotland still qualify for the World Cup round of 32? The 3rd place table and knockout permutations explained Every World Cup 2026 group stage tiebreaker: What happens if teams finish with the same points? If its not square, can it really be fair?The last uneven World Cup was in 1994, last time it was hosted in the United States.From six groups, two third-placed teams were eliminated: Russia from Group B and South Korea from Group C, albeit the United States went through in third place in Group A, and two of the three teams that went through playing after Russia and South Korea already had what they needed after two matches.The first 24-team European Championship in 2016 saw Albania (Group A) and Turkey (Group D) eliminated, while the Republic of Ireland (Group E) and Portugal (Group F) achieved the results they needed in their last games.Group B and E sent third-placed teams home from Euro 2020. In Euro 2024, Hungary (Group A) and Croatia (Group B) were the two third-placed teams eliminated from the group stage.Theres no smoking gun, no unimpeachable body of evidence that teams drawn into the early groups have historically been hurt by later teams knowing that a draw or a win or a certain number of goals will reel them in, at least not yet.There have been too many teams fall backwards into the knock-out rounds or pick up perfectly normal results at the end of the group stage to draw the conclusion that theres a measurable disadvantage simply to being drawn in Group A or B or C.But in FourFourTwos opinion, theres a layer of unnecessary doubt thats been introduced into tournaments by both FIFA and UEFA that makes the picture much clearer for teams in Senegals position than Scotlands.Theres no way to know how or even whether the creation of overlaps between what should be siloed groups can affect matchday three results, but even the possibility of a lopsided sporting equation would have been better avoided.TOPICSSenegalScotlandSouth KoreaWorld CupWorld Cup 2026Chris NeeChris is a Warwickshire-based freelance football writer specialising in West Midlands football, the Premier League, the EFL and the J.League. He is the author of the High Protein Beef Paste football newsletter and owner of Aston Villa Review. He supports Coventry Sphinx.
