A group stage (also known as pool play or the pool stage) is the round-robin stage of many sporting championships, particularly a sports' World Cup. The name implies that there is also a knock out stage to follow. For example in both the FIFA World Cup and Rugby World Cup the teams are split into groups (also known as pools) where they play each team in their group once under a round robin system. Points are earned during group play in order to rank the teams within a group. The top ranked teams (often the top two) from each group then proceed to the tournament's knock out phase. From there the tournament continues under a knock out system until the winner is found.
Read more about Group Stage: Association Football
Famous quotes containing the words group and/or stage:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes;
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)