If two teams cannot be separated after 80 minutes, extra time, sudden death and kicking competition will be used to determine the winner of a World Cup playoff.
Should the two competing sides be level at full time, there will be a 20-minute period of extra time (10 minutes per half, with a five-minute half-time break).
If the scores are still level after that, there will be a single 10-minute period of sudden death, where the first team to score points will win.
If the teams still can’t be separated, a kicking competition will determine the winners.
Each team nominates five kickers from the players still on the field and informs the referee of the order in which they will kick. These five players will then have one attempt each to kick a goal from one of three spots on the 22-metre line: directly in front of the posts, on the 15-metre line to the left of the posts, and the 15-metre line to the right of the posts.
The winning team is the one with the most successful kicks after five attempts, or earlier if one team is unable to equal the score of the other team with the number of kicks remaining.
If there are a equal number of successful kicks, the kicking competition will go into a sudden-death phase, following the same order of kickers until one player is successful and another misses.
Draws are relatively rare in World Cups. The most famous examples of playoff draws came in the 1995 and 2003 finals, while there have only been three draws in the pool stages.
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