The second half of Iran and Morocco’s tightly contested group match contained nothing too out of the ordinary by World Cup standards. Each side used all three substitutes; there was only one booking; no goals were scored. In a group with Spain and Portugal, both teams presumably were eager to steal a crucial three points […]
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, […]
Before the 2018 World Cup kicked off last week at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, much had been written about why Russia was so bad at soccer. A convincing 5-0 opening match win over Saudi Arabia — Russia’s first win at the tournament since 2002 also matched its largest margin of victory at a World Cup […]
When the 2018 World Cup begins play today, it’ll kick off what could be a very good month for the usual suspects of international soccer. Our World Cup probability model, which launched on Wednesday (read more about it here), gives Brazil — the most successful team in World Cup history — the best chance of […]