The World Cup has a habit of creating strange incentives at the end of the group stage. In 1982, West Germany and Austria famously sleepwalked through the majority of a 1-0 German victory in their final group match, one which pushed them through at the expense of an Algeria team which had won the previous day. To prevent that from happening again, FIFA began to play the final matches from each group concurrently.
On Thursday, we saw the method’s limitations. With Colombia beating Senegal, Japan recognized that they would be able to go through to the knockout round under FIFA’s fair play tiebreaker by avoiding yellow and red cards. They and an already-eliminated Poland side played the final 20 minutes of their match with the intensity of two teams trying not to wake up a sleeping child.
For Belgium and England, the die was cast before their match ever began. Both teams were guaranteed to go through and, even on every single FIFA tiebreaker, both sides knew the consequences of winning. A draw would see the winner of the group determined by either the fair play tiebreaker or, barring any gap there, a drawing of lots. The winner of the group would end up on the tough side of the bracket, likely facing a quarterfinal appearance against Brazil and a semifinal against Argentina, France or Portugal.
The loser, on the other hand, might not encounter anybody tougher than Spain on their side of the bracket, and even the Iberian side would have to wait until the semifinal. Both teams rightly saw the benefits in losing and turned over virtually their entire starting XIs. When England went down 1-0 to a goal by Adnan Januzaj, U.K. bookmakers improved their odds of winning the tournament from 8-1 to 6-1. England lost. So they won. I think.