Among the participants of all the former FIFA World Cup football championships, only England managed to move into the knock-out phase as unbeaten in the 2022 edition of the tournament.
This time, in the 22nd edition of the World Cup 2022, a total of seven teams out of eight former world champions are taking part when apart from England, rest of the six teams had bitter experiences of suffering defeats in one match each.
Germany, among all the seven former champions, are the only team of this edition to have a shocking elimination from the group stage.
Meanwhile, Japan,. Cameroon, Portugal, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia appeared as the giants killers.
The giant killing mission started with the two times champion and one of the all times favourites to win the title Argentina’s 1-2 defeat at the hands of Saudi Arabia.
Argentina, the hot favoutites of this edition, who are expecting to celebrate the trophy for the third time led by one of the all time great footballers Lionel Messi, began their campaign with a shock-shell defeat to Saudi Arabia.
It was simply hard to imagine that the team like Argentina, taking the lead inside 10 minutes of the game would suffer defeats to the underdogs of that match, Saudi Arabia. But it happened, as the Green Falcon forced the former title holders to begin the campaign with bitter experiences.
In fact the defeat in the first match turned for Argentina as a little threat about whether they could cross group stage, as the games against Poland and Mexico were a matter of life and death for the them. On that occasion, they did not fail, when Poland and Mexco from the same group drew on 0-0 and both of them won against Saudi Arabia.
Following the Argentine embarrassing experiences, Germany saw a huge blow after going down to Japan.
Japan also inflicted the shocking defeat over the four times World Cup champions, interestingly Japan, in that match also came from behind after trailing by a goal down to overpower one of the world football powerhouses.
Might be the Germans could not rid of the shell-shocking defeat, as ultimately one of the favourites were eliminated from the group stage. Other than their recent debacle in 2018 this has been the only other edition of the World Cup in which the German, the European team that experienced moments of glory, failed to cross the group stage hurdles.
However, Uruguay, the two champions including the first edition of the tournament, also went down to Portugal by 0-1 in their first match followed by France, who also celebrated the trophy twice, suffered 0-1 defeat to minnows Tunisia in their second match.
Spain, the champions of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, after flying start of 7-0 win over Costa Rica suffered 1-2 defeat to Japan.
Finally, Brazil, the team with the most championships in the history of this competition triumphing the trophy five times, went down to Cameroon by 0-1 after winning two matches in a row to qualify in the last 16 as the first team.
But England, who won the World Cup for once 58 years back in 1966, moved into the knock-out phase as unbeaten. The English after a bright start with 6-2 win over Iran did not look back as just after they drew a 0-0 with the USA, and defeated Wales by 3-0 in the next two matches.