Uruguay

• 1
  Uruguay's tournament ended in the group stage with a narrow 1-0 defeat to Spain in their final match — a frustrating way to go out for a team with genuine pedigree, done in by draws rather than a bad performance. Two draws and a loss just wasn't enough to survive Group H.
• 2
  The high point, such as it was, came against Cape Verde — a 2-2 draw where Uruguay came from behind twice against the tournament's feel-good debutants. It's not a famous win, but it showed a team that kept fighting even as the group slipped away from them.
• 3
  The turning point was really the whole group stage: two draws (1-1 with Saudi Arabia, 2-2 with Cape Verde) meant Uruguay needed a win against Spain and didn't get one. For a team with this much history, exiting on points-that-weren't-quite-enough is a quieter kind of disappointment than a big defeat, but it stings just the same.
• 4
  Federico Valverde was Uruguay's clear standout — the Real Madrid midfielder covered every blade of grass and gave the team its only real spark going forward. Striker Darwin Núñez, their top scorer in qualifying, spent most of the tournament on the bench and never really got the chance to change a game — worth mentioning as the what-if of Uruguay's campaign.
• 5
  Uruguay leave as a team that competed in every game but never quite got the result to match, which is its own kind of frustrating. With Valverde still only in his mid-20s, there's a reasonable case this squad gets another proper run at it before too long.