Watching the 2014 World Cup group stage, I realized that the traditional way of presenting results (table of teams, wins-draws-losses, goals, points) was unnecessary complicated for groups of four teams who only play each other once.

This is my attempt at simplifying the presentation. It looks like this:

For each group, there is one corner for each team. The line between teams represents the match between these teams, with the goals written closest to the team scoring them. The goals are colored green for wins, yellow for draws, and red for losses.

The group leader is outlined in a green dotted line, while the runner-up gets a yellow dotted line.

Click this link to see all groups, as well as an explanation of the figure (on the last page):

Results from all groups (updated after group stage finished)

While making this, I realized that using “points” (3 for win, 1 for draw) really doesn’t make sense in a group of 4 with 3 games each. You can always rank the teams by first counting wins, then draws; there will never be a 1-0-2 and 0-3-0 in the same group, and for the last couple of World Cups teams have not been compared across groups in any case.

Please let me know what you think about this in the comments. Thank you.