The 48-team World Cup gave us Cape Verde, but it also gave the big sides a safety net

In Group H this week a nation of barely 530,000 people knocked Uruguay out of the World Cup. Cape Verde, ranked 67th in the world and playing in their first ever tournament, finished above one of the game’s grand old names and booked a date with Argentina. If you wanted a single image to sell the expanded 48-team World Cup, that is it. The romance FIFA promised has arrived, and it is glorious.

I just can’t shake the feeling that the same format making these fairytales possible has also taken the edge off the thing that used to make the group stage so good.

The fairytales are real

Let’s give the expansion its due, because the underdog stories have been the best part of the tournament. Cape Verde went through their three group games unbeaten, second behind Spain, and now play the holders in Miami on July 3. Egypt reached the knockout phase for the first time in their history. South Africa did the same, Thapelo Maseko’s goal seeing off South Korea to take them somewhere they had never been before. Ecuador beat Germany. The smaller football nations have done far more than make up the numbers. They have knocked over teams who expected to stroll past them.

For all the worry that adding 16 teams would water the field down, the newcomers have largely earned their place. Cape Verde did not back into the last 32. They beat people to get there.

But look at who else survived

Here is the part that nags at me. Of the 48 teams that started, 32 go through to the round of 32. Only 16 are sent home. When two thirds of the field advances, the group stage stops being a cull and starts being a sorting exercise.

You could see it in how the big sides coped with adversity. Germany lost to Ecuador and still qualified. The United States were beaten by Turkey and still qualified. A generation ago a defeat like that in the final group game meant packing your bags, the gut-punch that gave the group stage its bite. Now it is a setback you can absorb on the way to the knockouts. The safety net is enormous, and it is the established teams, the ones with the squads to grind out a couple of points, who benefit from it most.

So you end up with a strange split. The format is generous enough to let Cape Verde and Egypt write history, which is wonderful, and generous enough that a stumbling giant rarely pays for it, which is not. The drama of a do-or-die final round, the table you could not stop refreshing, has been softened for almost everyone bar the genuine strugglers.

The jeopardy returns now

The good news is that the part of the tournament with real teeth starts here. From the round of 32 it is single-elimination, win or go home, and that is where Cape Verde against Argentina and Egypt against Australia stop being feel-good footnotes and become genuine bear traps for the favourites. The group stage gave us the stories. The knockouts will tell us whether they have another act in them.

I love what the bigger World Cup has done for the smaller nations. I just wish it asked a bit more of the bigger ones before letting them through.

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