The FIFA Men's World Cup of soccer, held every four years, with begin on June 14th with 32 national teams playing a round-robin schedule in eight groups of four countries each. Each team within a group will play each of the others once, and after this stage ends on June 28th, the top two finishers within each group will advance to the "knockout" rounds, starting with 16 teams on June 30th and progressing up to the championship match on July 15th. Russia is the host nation and as such has automatically qualified as one of the group stage teams. The matches will be played in various Russian cities, culminating with the championship to be played in Moscow. The United States pitifully failed to qualify for this 2018 World Cup...Chile, Netherlands and Italy were also surprise failures. I'll be rooting for all the Western Hemisphere countries to succeed, with Mexico as my top team. The following list shows the eight groups, each designated by a letter in the alphabet. I highlighted each group's generally-acknowledged favorite in red, while I marked the second-place favorites in blue. It should be interesting over the next two-to-three weeks to see which teams advance and which ones choke. The 2018 FIFA World Cup will be televised in the U.S. on Fox and Fox 1 Sports. Looking forward to some exciting high-level soccer, although I'll miss most of it due to work...and life in general. Still, I'm confident I'll catch some action here and there...
GROUP A
URUGUAY
RUSSIA
EGYPT
SAUDI ARABIA
GROUP B
SPAIN
PORTUGAL
IRAN
MOROCCO
GROUP C
FRANCE
DENMARK
AUSTRALIA
PERU
GROUP D
ARGENTINA
CROATIA
ICELAND
NIGERIA
GROUP E
BRAZIL
SWITZERLAND
COSTA RICA
SERBIA
GROUP F
GERMANY
MEXICO
SOUTH KOREA
SWEDEN
GROUP G
BELGIUM
ENGLAND
PANAMA
TUNISIA
GROUP H
COLOMBIA
POLAND
JAPAN
SENEGAL
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