group of death
Tournament's toughest draw
A group of death is a cluster of exceptionally strong competitors placed together in the early rounds of a tournament, guaranteeing that some elite teams will be eliminated before the knockout stage.
The term comes from soccer's World Cup but applies to any sport with group-stage formats: Brazil, Spain, and Germany in the same group—that's a group of death.
- poolCollective fund or basin
- tournamentMulti-round competitive event
- eliminationAct of removing entirely
- hyperboleRhetorical extreme exaggeration
- media sensationalismOverblown news coverage
soccer · colloquialism · underdog · idiom · unpredictability · early exit · jargon · difficulty · high stakes · pressure cooker · metaphor · bracket · rivalry · round-robin · stress · seeding · tension · mental toughness
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