Waiting For The Black Horses' Battle In The 2022 World Cup Third Place Competition

Illustration of the 2022 World Cup (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Croatian national team will face Morocco in the race for third place at the Qatar 2022 World Cup, Saturday, December 17. Both teams will be bentro at Khalifa International Stadium starting at 22.00 WIB.

This is the second time Croatia have had a tough battle and had clinical complaints in the race for third place. Vatreni had experienced the same moment at the 1998 World Cup.

At that time they won 2-1 over the Netherlands. They finished in third place in the second-largest sporting tournament in the world after the Olympics.

Setelah 20 tahun, Croatia hampir membuat kejutan dengan masuk final sebelum dihentikan Prancis yang tahun ini mengakhiri fairyah Morocco dalam babak semifinal lalu.

Morocco itself has met their expectations considerably. Finishing third place is a bonus for them, although it is undeniable that the success of reaching the semifinals had made them ambitious to become the tenth country to win the World Cup.

But with the status of the first African and Arab countries to reach the semifinals of the World Cup, they have made them heroes and champions for hundreds of millions of people in the two regions.

Morocco is also an inspiration to forces outside South America and Europe that in this era it is ready to reach the top round of the World Cup.

Both Croatia and Morocco will be as serious and as strong as ever and like the two of them had competed in the last Group F match.

The smiles are back.Game 🔛 #FIFAWorldCup #Qatar2022 #Family #Vatreni❤️‍🔥 pic.twitter.com/52YGO37U6R

— HNS (@HNS_CFF) December 16, 2022

Especially from the glasses of players like Luka Modric, this match will be the last game with his national team because he will step down to defend Croatia.

This makes the match for the third match of the 2022 World Cup as exciting as usual even though many people don't pay much attention to the finals, which in the edition brought together France and Argentina, who have both won the world twice.

Ironically, the match for third place in the World Cup is usually a place to create goals in large numbers from this party and the Golden Boot has also been obtained.

In addition to international and individual pride, there are many other good reasons for fans to watch the party.

One of the reasons is that in every race for third place or the World Cup bronze medal is a flood of goals.

Both teams will compete weightlessly and without pressure so that the free brands also deploy the best level of all players on the pitch.

Citing ESPN records, since the match for third place was first introduced at the 1930 World Cup, not a single match in this party ended goalless so it was never completed on penalties.

Even since Poland beat Brazil 1-0 in the match for third place at the 1974 World Cup, there has never been a match that ended with just one goal.

Of the 19 third-place fighting games, only three have scored just one goal, namely when Chile won 1-0 overTENance in 1962, Western Germany beat Uruguay 1-0 in 1970, and Brazil surrendered 0-1 to Poland in 1974.

In fact, four of the last third-place fighting games since the 1994 World Cup in the US, resulted in a minimum of four goals, bringing the total to 26 goals that all occurred in normal time.

On the other hand, in the same period, only one World Cup final resulted in more than four goals when France stopped Croatia 4-2 in the 2018 Russia World Cup final. Final parties in that period only produced a total of 15 goals in normal time.

In total, throughout the history of the World Cup, 73 goals were scored in 19 third-place fighting matches (in the 1930 and 1950 editions of the party were not played), 77 goals were scored in 21 World Cup finals.

In the 1930s and 1950s there were no third-place contests, so this position was determined by the performance in previous parties.

In other words, on average, the match for third place is more productive than the final match, which is 3.84 goals per match against 3.66 goals per match.

Even in this party, the record for the fastest goal in the World Cup was unshakable when Hakan Sukur scored in the eleventh second when Turkey beat South Korea in the race for the 2002 World Cup third place.

This high goal production occurred because the teams competing in the race for third place tended to both form an attacking formation that was bolder than other phase matches, including the final.

In this party, three players were awarded the Golden Boot after scoring in the third place match.

The three were Salvatore "Toto" Schillaci who scored the winner from the penalty spot which saw Italy end England's 2-1 resistance at the 1990 World Cup.

Then it was Davor Suker who won Croatia in 1998 and Thomas Muller who made Germany take third place in the 2010 World Cup.

Only the United States broke through the dominance of South America and Europe when they finished third in the 1930 World Cup which was attended by only 13 teams that were not as many as in the following periods and especially after the 1998 World Cup where since then the World Cup has been followed by 32 teams.

The US also achieved it without going through a third place match because this place was determined by the difference in US performance from previous matches.

South Korea in 2002 was the only team outside Europe and South America to ever experience the atmosphere of a third place in the race.

Beyond them, this party, like the final, has always been dominated by European and South American teams.

Therefore, when Morocco challenged Croatia tonight, Morocco not only became the third team from outside South America and Europe to experience this atmosphere, but also had the opportunity to become the first non-South American and European teams in 92 years to finish third in the World Cup.

𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐰𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐭 🫶🏻 pic.twitter.com/Sld1Xv5921

— Équipe du Maroc (@EnMaroc) December 15, 2022

The team that finishes third most is still held by Germany. Germany has been ranked fourth in four times. This is the same as the number of World Cup trophies that they have collected.

Poland, France, Sweden and Brazil have finished twice third each.

On the other hand, Uruguay has appeared three times in the race for third place in 1954, 1970, and 2000 but has never won.

Spain and Argentina are the two countries that have won the World Cup but have never appeared in a third place contest.

Ironically finishing third place in the World Cup was bad luck for Poland (1982), France (1986), Italy (1990), Sweden (1994), Croatia (1998), Turkey (2002) and the Netherlands (2014), because two years after reaching that position they failed to enter the European Cup finals.

Croatia was not affected by it and even emerged into a new force in world football until it became the 2018 edition finalist he almost repeated this year.

Meanwhile, Morocco is the first and also the opportunity to strengthen their historic record after winning the Africa Cup of Nations and once the Arab Cup.

Prior to the 2022 edition, Morocco had made history as the first African team to top the World Cup finals group in 1986. They are also one of the African and Arab teams to have appeared in the World Cup finals a total of six times.

Now they have the opportunity to become the first African, Arab and non-South American teams to finish third at the World Cup.