Five points.
Since the current 32-team format was implemented for the 1998 World Cup, five points is dividing line between advancement and disappointment.
Some background: before the 1994 World Cup, two points were awarded for a win and one point for a draw. What happened? Well, the 1990 World Cup was basically the soccer equivalent of the 1968 baseball season: defenses were dominant and no one felt super inclined to score. To try to encourage more goals, the value for a win was increased to three points for 1994.
Since the tournament still had 24-teams in 1994, I decided to simply look at the data going back to 1998. Here are the results:
| Adv | % | Did Not | % | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0% | 10 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | 0 | 0% | 18 | 100% | 18 |
| 2 | 0 | 0% | 7 | 100% | 7 |
| 3 | 1 | 5.56% | 17 | 94.44% | 18 |
| 4 | 11 | 47.83% | 12 | 52.17% | 23 |
| 5 | 15 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 15 |
| 6 | 11 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 11 |
| 7 | 16 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 15 |
| 9 | 10 | 100% | 0 | 0% | 10 |
So the takeaway is obvious: get five and you’re golden. Of course, that still requires going undefeated. Four points is basically a gamble, especially since that’s also the only score that has come down to goal differential.
You might be wondering: who the heck got three points and advanced? Chile in 1998. After drawing all three of their group stage games, they got demolished by Brazil 4-1 in the first knockout stage.
And finally, I was going to do a full day-by-day schedule run-down for various time zones, but there’s already a better-designed website doing that for me. The only thing really lacking is TV info, but at least in the US you have a one-in-three chance of getting that right anyway (ESPN, ESPN2, or ABC).