2026 World Cup: How third-place teams can still advance to the knockout stage

The 2026 World Cup includes third-place teams in the knockout rounds for the first time since the 1994 tournament in the United States.The last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup, the field was 24 teams and 16 teams made the knockout rounds. When the tournament was expanded to 32 teams in 1998, the knockout rounds stayed at 16 teams. That made the math easy. The top two teams from each of the eight four-team groups advanced.With the move to expand this Cup by 16 more teams to 48, the World Cup i