The World Cup is not traditionally the tournament for underdogs. The trophy has been lifted by just eight countries — and five of those have won multiple times. But there’s usually enough room for a few Cinderella stories to creep into the knockout phase: Bulgaria (1994), South Korea (2002) and Turkey (2002) were unexpected semifinalists, […]
Over the next few days, FiveThirtyEight will be examining each of the eight groups in the 2018 World Cup, which begins Thursday in Russia. Read about Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D and Group E. Germany, the defending World Cup champion, is one of the favorites to win the tournament — FiveThirtyEight’s Soccer […]
Sunday’s matches weren’t supposed to happen. None of the four teams playing was given even a 50 percent chance of reaching the knockout stage by ESPN’s Soccer Power Index-backed model at the start of the tournament. Now two will reach the quarterfinal and one will play a semifinal. Netherlands vs. Mexico: 12 p.m. EDT Costa Rica vs. […]
Sunday’s matches weren’t supposed to happen. None of the four teams playing was given even a 50 percent chance of reaching the knockout stage by ESPN’s Soccer Power Index-backed model at the start of the tournament. Now two will reach the quarterfinal and one will play a semifinal. Netherlands vs. Mexico: 12 p.m. EDT Costa Rica vs. […]
There’s really only one competitive match on the docket Wednesday, but it’s an intriguing one. Australia vs. Netherlands: 12 p.m. EDT Spain vs. Chile: 3 p.m. EDT Cameroon vs. Croatia: 6 p.m. EDT IN BRIEF See our World Cup predictions for the latest probabilities. IN DEPTH The best matchup of the day — by far — is La […]
