The World Cup of Soccer

Interesting Facts

• Qatar will be 8 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
  (10:00pm in Qatar will be 2:00pm EST)
• The tournament will be held in eight cities. The city of Lusail has the largest stadium, Lusail Iconic Stadium, capacity 80,000.
• This is the 22nd World Cup Championship.
• Qatar, as host country, got an automatic qualifying berth.
• Qatar won the bid for this World Cup in 2010 over the USA, Japan, the Korea Republic and Australia
• This is the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East.
• This is the first World Cup to be held in the winter.
• This is the last World Cup to have a 32 team format.
• France is the defending champion.
• Qatar is the only first time participant.
• Wales and Canada are participants for only the second time.
• Italy failed to make the World Cup for the second straight year (they are also the current EURO Cup champions - Champions of Europe).
• Italy is the highest ranked team (FIFA 6th, ELO 8th) not playing and Ghana is the lowest ranked team (FIFA 61st, ELO 74th) to be playing.
• There are six confederations in FIFA with the (following numbers of teams represented):
  • AFC - Asian Football Confederation (6)
  • CONCACAF - Confederation of North American, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (4)
  • UEFA - Union of European Football Associations (13)
  • CAF - Confederation of African Football (5)
  • CONMEBOL - South American Football Association (4)
  • OFC - Oceanic Football Association (0)
• Only UEFA are allowed more than one (but no more than two) teams from the same confederation in a Group.
• The official ball is named Al Rihla.
• The ball will have a motion sensor inside tracking every touch of the ball at a rate of 500 times a second
• More interesting information HERE.

The ( FIFA site).

The ELO wiki page.

How your selections get points (pts)

• 2 pts for picking BOTH teams (either order) from Group (Max = 16)
• 1 pt for picking each Round of 16 winner (Max = 8)
• 2 pts for picking each Quarter Final winner (Max = 8)
• 3 pts for picking each Semi-Final winner (Max = 6)
• 5 pts for picking The Winner (max = 5)
• For a maximum total of 43 points
• ================================
• Previous winners:
• Nicole and Mark in 2010; Tomas in 2014.
• I can't find 2018 results.

USA Group B schedule