[Anchor]
This coming Sunday, the 28th, a strange match will take place where victory is not exactly welcomed. We are talking about the final Group J match between Austria and Algeria.
Reporter Jeon Yeongmin explains why a win could be an unwelcome outcome.
[Reporter]
Austria and Algeria are currently tied with one win and one loss in Group J, with Austria sitting in second place and Algeria in third based on goal difference.
The two teams are set to face off this Sunday in what is essentially a battle for second place, but both sides may find winning to be an undesirable result.
Finishing in second place means facing the winner of Group H in the Round of 32, which is likely to be Spain, the second-ranked team in the FIFA rankings and a strong favorite to win the tournament.
On the other hand, if a team finishes third but manages to rank among the top eight third-place teams to advance to the Round of 32, they are likely to face Switzerland, which is objectively considered weaker than Spain.
Austria will drop to third place if they lose, while Algeria will fall to third if they draw or lose.
It is a bizarre situation where both teams might not want to win and take second place, yet they also risk elimination if they lose by a large margin and fall out of the top eight third-place rankings.
Coincidentally, the two teams share a bitter history from the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain, where they were involved as the perpetrator and victim of match-fixing.
At that time, Algeria had finished their final group match with two wins and one loss. In the match between West Germany and Austria, after West Germany scored an early goal, both teams stopped attacking and simply passed the ball around to ensure a 1-0 victory for West Germany.
Algeria was eliminated because, despite having the same points as West Germany and Austria, they fell behind on goal difference. That incident remains one of the worst scandals in World Cup history, and it led to the rule that all final group stage matches must be played at the same time.
With Austria, who benefited from that so-called collusion, and Algeria, who suffered the consequences, meeting in the World Cup for the first time in 44 years for a match where victory is not necessarily welcomed, foreign media outlets are predicting that this will be the most controversial game of the tournament.
(Video Editing: Lee Jae-sung, Design: Han Song-yeon & Han Heung-soo, Source: FIFA TV)
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