What is it?It's when a draw is made for a tournament, say the soccer World Cup, and one group looks utterly impossible to predict because each team is of a similar standard or capable of springing a surprise.

The term is usually applied to football, but features in other sports, too, not least rugby – when the countries ranked fourth, fifth and sixth in the world, France, Ireland and Argentina, were drawn in the same pool for the 2007 World Cup it was dubbed the group of death. It was, need you be reminded, the World Cup hopes of Ireland which expired, as Argentina and France went through to the quarter-finals.

Where did it come from?Uruguay manager Omar Borras took one look at the draw for the 1986 World Cup finals, which put his side in the same group as West Germany, Denmark and Scotland, and declared it to be " El grupo de la muerte".