Five similarities between the 2018 and 2002 World Cups

#3 Pre-tournament favourites floundered

Foot: Sweden - Argentina/World Cup 2002

As touched on earlier, France were the joint-favourites of the 2002 World Cup along with an Argentine side that had world-class players, including Gabriel Batistuta, Hernan Crespo, Ariel Ortega and Diego Simeone.

However, like France, La Albiceleste failed to make it out of a group also containing Nigeria, Sweden and England. They were not alone though with Portugal also failing to get out of group D that contained USA, Poland and South Korea. Italy would also lose out in the round-of-16 to co-hosts South Korea.

At the 2018 World Cup, Germany suffered a group stage exit, Spain and Argentina scraped through their groups before being eliminated in the second round by Russia and France respectively while red-hot favourites Brazil lost out to Belgium in the quarterfinals.