Canada women's soccer team players practise at the BMO Training Field in Toronto June 21.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
The FIFA World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand is about to get under way, with Canada playing its first game July 20 at 10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. PT.
Alone or with friends, filling out a bracket with your predictions is a fun way to amp up the excitement while following the tournament.
A guide to the 2023 Women’s World Cup: Schedule, Canada’s team, and how to watch
Make your tournament predictions and follow along with our downloadable PDF bracket, available below.
Download the bracket as a PDF here
How to fill out the World Cup bracket
Start with the outer sections of the bracket, lettered A to H, which focus on the group stage. In the group stage, which goes until August 3, all teams play in groups of four for a chance to move on to the Round of 16. Only the top two teams of each group will qualify.
In the group sections of your bracket, write your score predictions for each match. If you’re filling out the bracket after some of the games have already been played, include actual scores in those boxes and continue your predictions with the remaining matches.
Once you’re done with your predictions for the group matches, identify which teams you’ve ranked first and second in each group. To do this, you simply need to count points:
- A win gives a team three points
- A draw gives a team one point
- A loss gives a team zero points
With these rankings, move teams over to their next matches. To do this, put the first country of group A into 1A, the second team of group B into 2B, and so on. (If two teams are tied in points, the one with the higher difference between how many goals they conceded vs. scored takes the lead. If teams are still tied after the goal differential, then whoever scored the most goals leads.)
Finally, fill out the scores you think the teams will get in each match. One key difference with the group stage: there are no ties in this leg of the tournament. This means that each match has a clear winner who moves on to the next one, and a loser who gets eliminated, all the way until the finals.