This is the second World Cup in succession that Germany have failed to get out of their group, suffering the same fate in Russia in 2018.
This is from a BBC sports article: World Cup 2022: 'Germany exit as a fallen giant of world football'
I learnt that you can use "where" instead of "in which," but that you can't use "that", except for some exceptions such as "place". These are examples.
- Sydney is the city in which I was born.
- Sydney is the city where I was born.
- Sydney is the city that I was born.
I learnt that 1 and 2 are possible while 3 is ungrammatical, but that the word, "place", on the other hand, is one of the exceptions, which makes all four below possible.
- Sydney is the place in which I was born.
- Sydney is the place where I was born.
- Sydney is the place that I was born.
- Sydney is the place I was born.
This is what I have learnt so far at school.
Germany have failed to get out of their group in the World Cup. So, I believe the sentence should be either
- This is the second World Cup in succession in which Germany have failed to get out of their group, suffering the same fate in Russia in 2018.
or
- This is the second World Cup in succession where Germany have failed to get out of their group, suffering the same fate in Russia in 2018.
The first sentence I found in BBC does not accord with what I learnt at school. Is it grammatically correct to say that this is the second World Cup in succession that Germany have failed to get out of their group?