The 26 Standings

The group stage is done. All 72 matches have been played, the table is set, and the bracket for the knockout rounds is fixed — which means Wednesday offers something increasingly rare at a World Cup: a day with nothing to resolve and no result to chase. That is not a complaint. After four weeks of near-continuous football across three countries, a pause before the round of sixteen feels less like a gap in the schedule and more like a moment to take stock of what the group stage actually produced before the serious, unforgiving business of single-elimination begins. From here, every team that loses goes home. The margin for the kind of recovery that rescued sides in the group stage no longer exists. Thursday's first knockout fixtures will arrive soon enough.

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