By Collin Kimball-McKavish

This year marks the 22nd FIFA World Cup, featuring teams such as Portugal, England, and the USA, all competing to see who is the most dominant country in soccer in the world. This year, the teams are competing in Qatar. 32 teams lined up to compete in group stages, which have been culled down to 16 for the knockout stages, which began on December 3. The final will be on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 10 a.m. EST. 

Qatar is the first host nation ever to lose its opening match of the World Cup, losing to Ecuador 0-2 on Nov. 20. Only one other host country has failed to make it to the knockout round, which was South Africa, in 2010.

Image courtesy of FIFA.

Some of the world’s greatest players have announced that it will be the last World Cup of their careers. This list includes Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, and Brazil’s Neymar de Silva Santos, Júnior, notoriously known as just Neymar. All of these players have had great careers outside the World Cup in their respective club football careers and are seen as heroes for their countries. 

The World Cup is made up of two stages that are played in the tournament. The first stage is the group stage, which consists of 32 teams, in eight groups of four teams. The group stages are defined by a point system in which a team will obtain 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. The knockout stage is a 16-team single-elimination tournament that will ultimately decide which country has the best soccer team. 

ESPN has ranked the best games and the best players to watch throughout the World Cup, putting them into categories such as aging stars, young talent, and impact. They have listed the best games to watch, including England vs. the US and Brazil vs. Serbia. Ironically, the former ended in a tie, 0-0, on Friday, Nov. 25. 

The stadiums built in Qatar will be the first ones to ever be air-conditioned throughout the whole field. There are eight new stadiums that were built specifically for the World Cup. An air-conditioned field is a special renovation, because the blazing hot climate in Qatar would be detrimental to the players and fans. Qatar has refused to serve alcohol at stadiums, even though they have a deal with Budweiser to sell their products. However, there will still be alcoholic beverages in the high-end boxes and sweets for the more wealthy attendees at these games.

A star player who will not be playing in the World Cup this year is the Ballon D’Or winner Karim Benzema, who plays for the French national team. He sustained an injury in practice that put him out for the World Cup games. While France will be sure to miss him, they have plenty of talent that they can use strategically to help replace him. 

Through the first week of competition, the teams that stood out in terms of strength were England and Ecuador, which both won in blowout fashion against their first two opponents. While they may not have played the strongest teams in their groups, they showed how well they can perform on the biggest stage in the world. 

The World Cup trophy. Photo credit: Ulf Dietrich via Wikimedia Commons.

Teams that have been unimpressive so far include Qatar, Iran, and the US. While Qatar might have had opening nerves coming into their game on opening day for the tournament, they did not look to be in control of anything and really seemed like the worst team at the World Cup. They lost all three of their group games and did not make it to the round of 16.

Iran had a rough first matchup against England, conceding 6 goals and only scoring 2. While 2 goals against England are impressive, letting in 6 goals will have consequences because of goal differential. The US took a 1-0 lead early in their game against Wales but gave up a crucial penalty in the 82nd minute that cost them 2 points in the group stage. Unfortunately, the US was knocked out of the Cup by The Netherlands, 3-1, on Dec. 3.

Fans have been looking forward to this tournament for the past four years. This tournament gets the whole world watching and showing patriotism for their country, hoping that they can achieve the top spot of the World Cup crowning themselves world champions.

Read Michael Karjavine’s predictions for how the Cup might end.