While it was definitely used sometime before 1986, it seems like English-language journalists finally became comfortable with the phrase "group of death" in the lead-up to the Mexico World Cup.

The earliest primary-source mention in English I could find was in a travel column from the Times of London written on May 12, 1986 by Alan Franks. In the aftermath of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Mexico City in 1985, Franks tried to give his World Cup-going readers some alternatives to a city he claimed "was never much to write home about even before the earthquake."

They could go to places like, say, Queretaro instead. As Franks wrote: "Queretaro had the added attraction of being the home of Scotland 's group in the World Cup -- a group which has been dubbed, unfortunately perhaps, e

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