OFFSIDE | Manners maketh man: Can good behaviour could help a team qualify for Round of 32? | Football News

Kingsman: The Secret Service is actually a James Bond movie without being one. Over-the-top villains, goofy plots, and a suave romcom lead suddenly turned into an all-out action hero make it one of the more enjoyable movies of the last few years. And one of the defining lines of that movie is when Colin Firth’s Harry Hart tells a group of young working-class men in need of silver suppositories: manners maketh man.After that, he goes on to channel his inner Batman, a snooty rich man beating up working-class delinquents, and teaches them a lesson. Now, we all love that scene, but in this FIFA World Cup, manners maketh not just man but the man’s chance to qualify. Or at least the team’s. How, you ask? Well, first let’s take a little walk down memory lane.Over the years, the number of participants in the World Cup has varied greatly. It started with 13 teams in 1930, moved to 16 for much of the early tournament era, took a hiatus during World War II when Europeans preferred tanks and guns to balls, expanded to 24, then settled into a 32-team format before FIFA decided that the golden goose hadn’t laid enough eggs and brought us to our 48-team format in the US.

Now, while Gianni Infantino’s decision was based on getting closer to Mammon and trying to make more populous nations like India and China qualify, this format has still given us a rollercoaster of a ride, more so because it has required all of us to do a little more maths than we would like to do in our adult lives, except when we file income tax returns.In the older days, the top two teams from each group qualified, giving us a Round of 16 that was usually the signal for England to lose on penalties. Now we have 12 groups of four teams each, from which the top two qualify directly. The next eight spots are filled by the eight best third-placed teams.How do you select them? Well, it is a bit ambiguous, so we decided to make it much simpler. All the teams that finish third are put into an imaginary league table and ranked based on their performance in the groups. First, the teams with the highest points make it. That means any team that has managed four points is mostly a shoo-in. Next, we check goal difference. After that, goals scored. And if all that is equal, we look at who has been a better boy.Quite literally, because the team selected is then based on fair-play points, meaning the side with fewer disciplinary deductions ranks higher.The score is calculated using:

The team with fewer deducted points ranks higher. And if somehow two teams also have the same disciplinary record, the tie is settled by their FIFA rankings.As things stand, the teams that have snuck in through the third-place door are Sweden, Ecuador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Paraguay and Senegal. It is not the most romantic way to qualify, though neither is renewing your passport, and that too remains essential for international travel.The sides still waiting in the footballing departure lounge are Iran, South Korea, Croatia, Algeria and DR Congo. Iran have three points, a goal difference of zero and the facial expression of a man waiting for his name to be called at a government office. They are in a decent position, but if the remaining groups all produce third-placed teams on four points, Iran could still be shoved out of the queue.

South Korea are in an even more uncomfortable place. They are on three points, -1 goal difference and two goals scored. That puts them on the cutline, which is essentially the football equivalent of standing on one leg during a medical test. Scotland, on three points but with a -3 goal difference and only one goal scored, need the sort of cosmic intervention usually reserved for Greek mythology and Fergie Time winners.The moving parts are in Groups J, K and L. Algeria face Austria. A win or draw should make life far easier; a defeat leaves them at the mercy of spreadsheets. DR Congo face Uzbekistan with the simplest instruction in football: win. Anything else is basically a boarding pass home. Croatia face Ghana, and a draw should be enough; defeat would leave them needing help from elsewhere. Panama, meanwhile, can still enter this mess if they beat England and Croatia lose to Ghana.

The scenarios

This is where disciplinary records could actually come into play, though not through Panama. Panama’s final game against England may still matter to England, but it no longer matters to Panama’s own qualification hopes. Having lost to both Ghana and Croatia, Panama are already trapped at the bottom of Group L by the head-to-head rules, which means they cannot sneak into the third-place table even with a dramatic final-day win.The cleaner fair-play wrinkle is between Algeria and Paraguay.If Algeria draw 0-0 with Austria, they would finish third in Group J with four points, -2 goal difference and two goals scored. That would make their record identical to Paraguay’s third-place finish in Group D: four points, -2 goal difference and two goals scored. At that point, the game stops being about goals and becomes about manners.Then FIFA moves to the team conduct table, which is football’s version of a school report card. A yellow card costs -1, a second-yellow red costs -3, a straight red costs -4, and a yellow followed by a straight red costs -5. On the current fair-play numbers, Algeria are sitting at -1, while Paraguay are at -12. That gives Algeria an 11-point cushion, which is less a gap and more a moral Grand Canyon. Paraguay’s disciplinary record is less a football stat and more a rap sheet.

In practical terms, Algeria could pick up ten yellow-card points’ worth of deductions against Austria and still stay ahead of Paraguay on fair play. If Algeria somehow fall all the way from -1 to -12, the teams would be level on conduct too, at which point FIFA rankings would decide the order. Algeria would need to drop to -13 or worse for Paraguay to overtake them on the fair-play tiebreaker.This one is also more about ranking than survival. With four points, both Algeria and Paraguay should almost certainly be safe in the third-place scramble. But the principle still stands: in this brave new World Cup, a yellow card can matter, and qualification order can come down simply to whether you are nice or naughty.As Harry Hart would put it: manners maketh a team qualify.MEME WATCH1) Cape Verde in the Round of 322) Edward Norton talking to Edward Norton 3) Cape Verde’s keeper 4) Uruguay vs SpainPS: Thanks to @kushan_mitra and @satire_sarathy for today’s memes. If you want to see your meme featured tweet with #TOIOFFSIDE and tag @nonsensicalnemo on X.