Fit to be tied: The big upsets at the World Cup so far have been matches ending at 0-0, 1-1 and 2-2

The teams that are ranked 61st, 67th and 85th in FI­FA’s world rank­ings all were heavy un­der­dogs in their first match­es at the World Cup.

They all played Mon­day. None of them won. None of them lost, ei­ther.

Through five days and 16 match­es of soc­cer’s biggest ex­trav­a­gan­za ever, the un­der­dogs are prov­ing to be very tough to beat. All four match­es on Mon­day end­ed in ties — the most in a sin­gle day of men’s World Cup play since 1958 — and all of them tech­ni­cal­ly could be con­sid­ered up­sets as well.

The biggest win (that wasn’t a win) of all saw Cape Verde — ranked No. 67 and in its World Cup de­but — hold No. 2 Spain, a favourite to win the whole thing, 0-0 in what eas­i­ly has been the biggest shock­er of the tour­na­ment to this point.

“It means every­thing,” said Cape Verde coach Pe­dro Leitão Brito, who sim­ply goes by Bu­bista.

The oth­er Mon­day re­sults:

— No. 85 New Zealand, the low­est-ranked team out of the 48 qual­i­fiers en­ter­ing the World Cup, tied No. 20 Iran 2-2.

— No. 61 Sau­di Ara­bia tied No. 16 Uruguay 1-1.

— No. 29 Egypt tied No. 9 Bel­gium 1-1.

For Mon­day’s un­der­dogs, the ties were a pret­ty big deal. But even they knew what the Cape Verde score meant in the grand scheme of things.

“The draw in­volv­ing Spain,” Sau­di Ara­bia coach Geor­gios Do­nis said, “may be the biggest sur­prise in this World Cup.”

Four years ago, the Saud­is opened with a shock­ing win over even­tu­al cham­pi­on Ar­genti­na.

The World Cup isn’t like the NCAA tour­na­ment. No­body is elim­i­nat­ed or as­sured of ad­vanc­ing no mat­ter the out­come of their first match. But if this event was more like March Mad­ness, it’s cer­tain that plen­ty of brack­ets would al­ready be bust­ed.

Spain was –1500 to beat Cape Verde ac­cord­ing to odds post­ed just be­fore the match start­ed Mon­day. Those are over­whelm­ing odds, ones that mean bet­tors would have had to wa­ger $1,500 just to prof­it $100. And odd­s­mak­ers in Las Ve­gas said Spain was picked to win in a slew of par­lays, all of which were quick­ly doomed.

“This shows how dif­fi­cult it is to play (the first game) in a World Cup,” Uruguay’s Maxi Araújo said. “We’ve seen that they are dif­fi­cult — not on­ly in our group, but in many groups.”

He’s right. And there’s not much mar­gin of er­ror now in Groups F and H.

Teams are guar­an­teed three group-stage match­es at the World Cup, one against each of the oth­er three teams in their group. The top two fin­ish­ers in each of the 12 groups are as­sured of reach­ing the knock­out stage; the eight best third-place teams al­so will ad­vance.

But in Group F (New Zealand, Iran, Bel­gium and Egypt) and Group H (Uruguay, Sau­di Ara­bia, Spain and Cape Verde), every­one has ex­act­ly one point with two match­es left. Teams get three points for a win, no points for a loss.

“A lot of pos­i­tives to build on,” New Zealand’s Eli­jah Just said.

The up­sets-that-were-ties trend didn’t start Mon­day. There were two oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ones ear­li­er in the tour­na­ment: No. 56 Qatar tied No. 19 Switzer­land 1-1, and No. 64 Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina tied No. 30 Cana­da 1-1.

Through the first 16 match­es, eight end­ed in ties. The oth­er two weren’t ex­act­ly of the shock­ing va­ri­ety: No. 18 Japan was a slight un­der­dog go­ing in­to its 2-2 tie with No. 8 Nether­lands, and No. 6 Brazil and No. 7 Mo­roc­co — as would be ex­pect­ed, giv­en how close they are in the world rank­ings — tied their open­ing match 1-1.

There’s been on­ly one match through Mon­day where a team was 10 or more spots be­low its op­po­nent in the FI­FA world rank­ings go­ing in and won: No. 33 Ivory Coast beat­ing No. 23 Ecuador 1-0.

Not ex­act­ly a shock­er. But some of these ties would qual­i­fy as such.

“Foot­ball is like that,” Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said. “There are no small op­po­nents here.” — MI­A­MI GAR­DENS, Fla. (AP)

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Sto­ry by TIM REYNOLDS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press