Giving pace and flow to a month-long event is not an easy thing to do but that's exactly what the scheduling formula installed for 32 teams in 1998 does.
The first-round or Group stage allows the 32 qualifying nations three matches to prove their place among the top 16 teams in the world. Luck of the draw is the wild card of course and round-robin play theoretically tends to promote the good teams but as this year's World Cup has shown, it can also work as a great equalizer (single knockout would of course be a non-starter after two years of qualifying).
What the Group stage does is give the national soccer federations of the 32 countries involved their two-week payoff of massive television and media exposure for soccer. It also sets the stage for the storylines to come in the final two weeks.
The third week -- actually typically nine days -- spans two weekends and gives us the Round of 16 and quarter-finals. In that tight span, the media and fan focus narrows from the 32 countries of the Group stage to 16 to eight to four.
The fourth and final week is where it all comes together, of course, making the quarter-final round the big cut off. What makes losing in the quarter-finals such a bitter pill to swallow is how big a difference there is there between winning and losing. Losers go home. Winners advance to the final four, are guaranteed two matches and bask in the global media attention of the climax of the quadrennial tournament.
There's nothing like being World Cup champion; the winner truly gets the spoils. But there's also a sense of tidiness that comes from the ranking of #1 through #4 at the top of the chart of 32 qualifying nations.
It's the perfect Saturday-Sunday one-two punch ending to the world's greatest single sport event and it's part of what helps make it the television, media and marketing juggernaut it is.
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