Who would the US need to beat to win the World Cup? Probably only Spain, France and England

Mauricio Pochettino’s team won their group after some impressive performances. But they’d probably need to beat some of the world’s best to claim the title Football Unites the World … in wishing it had paid more attention in applied mathematics class. Or so the Fifa slogan could have been expanded to say, given the mind-warping that arose from the formula for slicing the newly expanded 48-team tournament down to 32 sides for the first knockout round . After all, why do a random draw when you can build a matrix with 495 possible scenarios in order to assign the fixtures for the eight best third

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