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Spain And Portugal Could Need To Draw Lots To Decide Who Tops Group B

Spain And Portugal Could Need To Draw Lots To Decide Who Tops Group B

The Iberian sides play Morocco and Spain respectively next Monday and there's still a chance one of them could go out.

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

Spain and Portugal both would have expected to win by more than one goal margins in their games on Wednesday but failure to do so means the two sides go into their last games almost neck and neck.

When the draw for the World Cup was made back in December last year the immediate thoughts about Group B were that Spain vs Portugal as an opener would be a bit tasty and that those two sides were likely to qualify pretty easily.

Their opening round 3-3 draw last Friday did not disappoint, in fact it was easily the game of the tournament up to now and it's unlikely to be topped any time soon.

Both sides then went on to win their second games of the tournament 1-0 on Wednesday, Portugal beating Morocco in the early game through a Cristiano Ronaldo before Spain beat Iran through Diego Costa's lucky strike.

The scores leave both sides from the Iberian peninsular on four points with a goal difference of plus one but rather than Portugal being ahead on alphabetical order it's currently Spain leading the way. The 2010 World Cup winners are top because they've got one fewer yellow cards.

It's so close that should Spain and Portugal win their final games by the same scoreline, against Morocco and Iran respectively, and Spain get one more yellow in the last games then FIFA would draw lots to decide who finishes top.

Spain could consider themselves a little lucky to beat Iran. Image: PA Images
Spain could consider themselves a little lucky to beat Iran. Image: PA Images

There is actually still away that that drawing of lots could be to determine which of the two teams goes out and who goes through as second.

If both sides lost by the same score than Iran would go through on six points and Spain and Portugal would be battling it out, via the draw, to decide who finished second, though that seems an unlikely turn of events.

Ronaldo's header gave Portugal a fortunate win. Image: PA Images
Ronaldo's header gave Portugal a fortunate win. Image: PA Images

The two sides already know that should they both qualify they'll be facing one of Russia and Uruguay with the two qualifiers from Group A already decided.

With Cristiano Ronaldo on four goals and Diego Costa on three goals there's some personal competition between the two European sides in the final group games too.

Monday at 7pm could be a very interesting time.

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Topics: Football News, Russia 2018, World Cup news, Portugal, World Cup, Spain, Russia, Cristiano Ronaldo