If the World Cup is the most interesting global sports event, and it is, the best part of the most interesting global sports event is the first 10 or 11 days. The first two passes through group play, that is.

Which ends tomorrow. And I am already a bit sad.

Why? It should be fairly obvious, but I will go ahead and outline my reasons.

1. During the first two rounds, June 13-22, we had 10 consecutive days of games at the same three starting times. In the UAE, it was 8 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.  In New York, it was noon, 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

That is a huge advantage for the World Cup over the Olympics, the other major global event. During the Olympics, we are never quite sure when the event we want to see will go off, and many broadcasters tape delay the whole of the competition anyway, and give it to you in whatever order they wish.

The World Cup? If you can keep track of three games per day — and all of them happening at the same time, day after day — you are set. Thirty-two teams, none of them the same, often bearing very little in common with the others, and we see them cycle through — twice. It is the ultimate in world sports TV viewing.

2. Going into the first and second games of group play, nobody is eliminated. Dreamers are allowed to dream. Everyone has a chance, before the first kickoff. And before the second kickoff, too. No one is headed home. Not yet.

Spain, for instance. That 5-1 to the Netherlands was just a fluke. England, for example. The 2-1 to Italy was actually good news because they looked sprightly. And we can pick up on some outside team who won their first match and decide they will be the surprise team of the tournament. Like Costa Rica (actually, yes) or Switzerland (no, probably).

Anything is possible, and fans are still into their team, and we are into watching that team and their fans who think they can survive.

3. The third group game is very much not what were the first two rounds. Some teams are already out (England, Spain and Australia, for example), while others are already in (Colombia, Costa Rica, Netherlands, Chile).

And this is the really bad part: Those three games that were spread out over eight hours … become four games jammed into six hours, with two games running at the same time early, then two more games going simultaneously late, which means we have to choose and cannot give, say, Ecuador, the attention they deserve.

Why do they double up and have all four teams from a group kick off at once? So that no two teams known what the other two already have done, and can plan accordingly. (This goes back to an infamous match at the 1982 World Cup, when neighbors West Germany and Austria could both advance with a specific outcome, at the expense of Algeria, which under other outcomes would advance. And they produced that outcome, 1-0 for West Germany, with neither team trying to score, thereafter. That led to “all four teams in a group play at the same time in the final match” … which was going to happen, eventually, but still …

Thus, four games a day for four days, which is the final round of group play. It not only offers some pointless games, it also makes us choose. We miss half of those 16 games when a fair chunk of us will have seen at least part of all of the first 32.

So, it’s over tomorrow, and won’t return for another four years … and I already feel the loss. Even if watching that 2 a.m. game was slowly turning me into a zombie.