That’s 48 games down, 56 more to go.At the end of the second of the three sets of group matches, seven teams have made it into the knockouts — Argentina, Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, Norway and the United States — and five have been eliminated: Haiti, Jordan, Panama, Tunisia and Turkey.Lionel Messi of Argentina looks, improbably, as good as ever at 39 (it’s his birthday today) and leads a star-studded Golden Boot race with five goals, ahead of Kylian Mbappe (France) and Erling Haaland (Norway), who are both on four.If you want to understand which teams are going through, how the bracket is shaping up and what the results of round two mean for your team, then have a look at The Athletic’s bracket and projection model.World Cup Tracker Group Stage scenariosBut before it begins, we asked some of our writers to tell us one thing that surprised them in round two and make one prediction for round three.This is what they said.Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic appOne thing that surprised us in round twoOliver Kay: I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how open so many of the games have remained. There have been so many goals, and while some people might put it down to the number of smaller nations due to the 48-team format, the reality is that we have seen high-scoring matches across the board. There’s a real lack of jeopardy, but so far the group stage has been a lot of fun.Jacob Whitehead: I did not think South Korea would be as bad as they were against Mexico, having begun the tournament with an excellent display against the Czech Republic. They may recover to make the knockout stages, but relative to expectations, it was possibly the poorest performance of the World Cup so far.Phil Hay: The quality of fringe, or less sexy, goalkeepers (when I say sexy, I mean fashionable). Eloy ‘Boom, shake the’ Room was record-breaking for Curacao against Ecuador, Iran’s Alireza Beiranvand pulled off the save of the tournament against Belgium, Vozinha is part of a Cape Verde squad who look like a proper football team.