FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022: The story of week 3

This week saw the conclusion of the tournament’s group stage followed by the beginning of the knockout games, as the pressure began to build on teams with high expectations back home. We’ve seen fantastic underdog stories and dramatic exits from some nations that were originally thought to be in it to win it.

We lost three huge tournament names at the very first hurdle when the group stage concluded. Germany, Belgium and Uruguay were all teams expected to progress from the groups and were teams tipped to go potentially quite deep into the tournament, but for one reason or another they didn’t quite live up to potential.

Germany finally got a win on the board in their final group game against Costa Rica. Kai Havertz was the star man in their 4-2 victory at Al Bayt, but it wasn’t enough for the Germans after Spain lost 2-1 to Japan in the group’s other final game. This was enough for Japan to win the group and knock Germany out at this stage for the second World Cup in a row.

On Friday, Uruguay found themselves in a similar situation to Germany. In their final group game, vs Ghana, they found themselves 2-0 up with 10 minutes of the game left to go. But then, in the group’s other game, Korea Republic took a shock late lead against Portugal, putting them above Uruguay in the group on goal difference. This meant that despite already being in the lead, Uruguay needed to score another goal to qualify for the next round. Despite crafting a few chances, the South Americans fell short and the team tipped to be the tournament’s ‘dark horse’ by many were knocked out at the expense of Korea.

This World Cup was viewed as the last chance at glory for Belgium’s ‘golden generation’. Some of their preparations were hindered by injuries to