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  • 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 BBC sports. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/63829138

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.

  1. Sydney is the city in which I was born.
  2. Sydney is the city where I was born.
  3. 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 some of the exceptions, which makes all four below possible.

  1. Sydney is the place in which I was born.
  2. Sydney is the place where I was born.
  3. Sydney is the place that I was born.
  4. 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?

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  • Title is a bit verbose and vague and confusing. Recommended action is to remove everything after the first period.
    – fertilizerspike
    Jan 5 at 1:17
  • I would not expect to hear “the city that I was born” without a final “in”.
    – Anton Sherwood
    Jan 6 at 4:13

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Why relative adverb? You wanted to mean relative pronoun since World Cup is a noun or subject but not a place, I think. That is probably the most versatile relative pronoun for informal situations, but remember: it can't follow a preposition and usually can't introduce non-restrictive clauses. Look at these examples:

It was a service for which I'll be grateful

The train, which was an hour late, has broken down.

Would be incorrect to replace which with that. None of these two situations take place in your example, so it's OK the use of that. You can find more details on the Cambridge Dictionary site:

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  • I'm sorry, but "The train, that was an hour late, had broken down." Is OK. the Cambridge article doesn't preclude it.
    – Peter Jennings
    Jan 5 at 1:08
  • It does. Read in the 'typical errors' section, or read the table at the beginning where it's clearly stated that that isn't allowed for non-defining clauses
    – tac
    Jan 5 at 1:31

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