The 26 Standings

The group stage is done. All 72 matches have been played, the table is set, and the World Cup now belongs entirely to the knockout rounds — though none of those matches fall on today's card. It is, in other words, a day for tallying what the past month produced: the upsets that rewrote expectations, the narrow margins that sent some nations home and others through, and the quieter arithmetic of goal difference that settled more than a few fates. For readers catching their breath before the single-elimination pressure resumes, today offers a moment of perspective rather than result. The bracket is fixed, the groups are history, and whatever happens next will be decided without a safety net. Consider this the pause between movements — brief, necessary, and not entirely unwelcome.

— the morning line, generated from the day's data