World Cup 2018: Australia in the pool of death.

Exciting that the World Cup is beginning again, and also that Australia is in there once again. So I wanted to do my standard calculation of the “pool of death”. This is done by calculating the weighted average variance of the two top ranked teams in each group, and the 2nd and third ranked team in each group. And the results aren’t great. The groups, ranked in most deadly to least are as follows.

1. Group C (France, Peru, Denmark Australia)
2. Group G (Belgium, England, Tunisia, Panama)
3. Group H (Poland, Columbia, Senegal, Japan)
4. Group D (Argentina, Croatia, Iceland, Nigeria)
5. Group F (Germany, Mexica, Sweden, Korea)
6. Group E (Brazil, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Serbia)
7. Group B (Portugal, Spain, Iran, Morocco)
8. Group A (Uruguay, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Russia)

So not great for Australia being the whipping boy in an extremely competitive group.