It happens every four years: A group of world-class soccer players disperse from their title-winning club teams across Europe's Big Five top leagues and put a pause on competing against each other in the Champions League.
For these players, their home nation expects a run deep at the World Cup. Experts tab their national team as one of the heavy favorites to win at all.
And then .. they're eliminated from the World Cup after just three matches.
The beauty and horror of the World Cup is one and the same.
Since soccer is the most popular sport in the world and since the tournament happens only once every four years, these games are imbued with more collective meaning and emotion than anything you might see in your favorite league or even in the Olympics.
At the same time, it's all taking place in a sport where everyone is helplessly chasing around a bouncing ball and trying to control it with their feet.
Favorites in soccer win way less often than favorites do in any of the major American sports.
This is why, say, the Premier League awards its champion based on an equal, cumulative schedule where you play each team twice, home and away.
And yet, the highest-profile tournament in the sport does the exact opposite: no one plays the same schedule in a World Cup, and a large chunk of the field gets eliminated after just three games.
The bounce of the ball, in other words, writes the history of the World Cup just as much as Lionel Messi or Kylian Mbappé 's ability to control it.
At this year's tournament, there are six clear favorites: Spain, France, England, Brazil, Argentina, and Portugal.
Oddsmakers have these six teams pegged as the likeliest to win the entire tournament .
If we say that each of them has a 90% chance of advancing out of their groups, then it would be quite unlikely that any one particular country gets sent packing before the knockout rounds begin.
But if we take it all together -- multiply 90% by itself six times -- then there's about a 50% chance that at least one of the favorites goes home after the group stage.
So, who might it be? Let's look at these six favorites and assess the likelihood that they each get sent home early.
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We've had six different World Cups this century, and we've lost at least one major favorite during the group stages in each one.
In 2002, Argentina only managed to score two goals across three games and finished behind both Sweden and England in their group. In 2006, Czechia came into the tournament as the No. 2 team in the FIFA rankings, and despite crushing the United States by 3-0 in their opener, they lost their next two to finish behind eventual champions Italy and Ghana.
Italy, of course, haven't won a World Cup game since the 2006 final, and they finished last in their group in 2010.
Spain went home after three matches in 2014 despite entering the tournament as the defending World champs and back-to-back winners at the Euros.
Germany followed suit in 2018, defending their title by finishing last in their group. And then, in 2022, Belgium's golden generation went out with a whimper, scoring one goal across three matches and finishing behind Morocco and Croatia
To put a little more context on all of this, here's how each side stacked up, based on their Elo ranking and rating at the start of the tournament:
· 2002, Argentina: 2nd, 2020 · 2006, Czechia: 4th, 1971 · 2010, Italy: 6th, 1936 · 2014, Spain: 2nd, 2107 · 2018, Germany: 2nd, 2076 · 2022, Belgium: 5th, 2006
So, the average ranking of the eliminated favorites was 4th, and the average rating of the eliminated favorites was 2019.
The team currently rated fourth by the Elo system? England. And their overall rating? 2020. It may not be coming home, after all.
The unfortunate part of all of this is that the favorites are less likely to crash out early than ever before.
Not because talent has consolidated at the top -- if anything, the opposite has happened.
Rather, it's because FIFA wants more money, even if it means a less exciting early phase of the World Cup. Since FIFA expanded the World Cup to a whopping 48 teams, the groups themselves are weaker than ever before.
As I wrote about after the draw, the “group of death” is effectively dead .
On top of that, the new format means eight of the 12 third-place teams will also advance to the knockout rounds.
Of the top eliminated favorites this century, just two -- Germany in 2018 and Italy in 2010 -- finished in fourth in their groups.
So even if one of the favorites struggles through their easier-than-ever group, they're still probably going to advance so long as they find a way to win at least one of their three matches.