After weeks of golazos, flops and inaccurate estimates of stoppage time, the World Cup is nearly over. We’ve been tracking, and forecasting, each team’s chances as the tournament has unfolded, and we thought it would be fun to look back at how the final between France and Croatia got made. Our final pre-match predictions give France a 59 percent and Croatia a 41 percent of winning it all in Russia — but at the start of the knockout round, their chances of winning the trophy were only 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Here are the paths each team took to the final game.
Check out our latest World Cup predictions.