Going into a World Cup, we tend to vastly overestimate the quality required to win the tournament.

All eventual winners have weaknesses. Many of them are entirely average in the group stage. Some have a serious problem with a lack of firepower up front.

Not every World Cup winner is Brazil 1970. Many more World Cup winners have offered a solid defensive record and a habit of squeezing through by a single-goal margin or winning on a penalty shootout.

Here are six lessons from the six most recent winners of the tournament: France in 1998, Brazil in 2002, Italy in 2006, Spain in 2010, Germany in 2014 and France in 2018.

You don’t need to impress in the group stage

Plenty of football analysis works backwards from the result, particularly at World Cups. Once you see the winning captain lift the trophy and the street parties back home, you look back on that side’s performance in awe.

But things are often much trickier in the group stage. Granted, the 1998 and 2002 winners, France and Brazil, both managed nine points (although France, given a particularly easy draw, made things much look harder than that would suggest).

More recent winners have laboured. In 2006, Italy barely got out of first gear in the group stage (and were hugely fortunate to get past Australia in the second round). Spain contrived to lose their opener in 2010, a 1-0 defeat to Switzerland when Vincente del Bosque’s side lacked any kind of penetration.

In 2014, Germany thrashed Portugal 4-0, partly thanks to Pepe’s foolish first-half red card. They then needed to throw on Plan B Miroslav Klose against Ghana and just about squeezed past the United States 1-0.

France were truly wretched in the group stage four years ago, scoring just three goals in three group games — one a penalty, another an own goal — and contributing to probably the worst game of the tournament, a 0-0 draw with Denmark. They recorded non-penalty xG (expected goals) figures of 0.6, 1.9 and then 0.3 in the group.

None of the past four World Cup winners have collected nine points from the group stage and perhaps more pertinently, none were even close to being the most impressive side in the competition during the first three games.

But no trophies are handed out after three games. The group stage is about getting the job done and with a congested schedule and larger squads, World Cup 2022 might be a tournament where the big sides start slowly, with managers rotating more than we’ve come to expect.