The Silver Bulletin World Cup quarterfinals preview
PELE’s forecast for the final eight: France leads a tight field, Argentina has the easiest path, and Norway has a real chance to crash the party.
This iteration of the World Cup has lived up to the hype so far. Say what you want about the 48-team format — which is probably here to stay unless FIFA expands to 64 teams instead. But having an extra knockout round has only raised the suspense for the teams that have survived.
Part of what’s made this World Cup intriguing is that no team has looked utterly dominant thus far. After a pristine group stage, Argentina has looked very beatable in the first two KO rounds — Cape Verde and Egypt were heavy underdogs, but the former nearly stole the game, and the latter gave it away. Meanwhile, betting markets lost faith in Spain after their 0-0 draw in the opener against the same Cape Verde, and Lamine Yamal, recovering from injury, has had a notably quiet tournament.
How about France? They began the World Cup as our 3rd-most likely winner but are now our favorite — though only by a hair over Argentina and Spain. Betting markets see them as a clearer #1. That’s reasonable using market valuations, which puts them highest in the world by our method. They’re the most fun team to watch and the first one you’d pick in a video game.
But in our system, these market valuations serve more as indicators of upside potential or team trajectory than of the quality on the pitch today. France has had some speed bumps since being the runner-up in the 2022 World Cup, like a draw in qualifying against Iceland, a home loss to Italy in the European Nations League, and a friendly loss to Cote d’Ivoire just before the start of this tournament. So far in the World Cup, they’ve played every bit up to that potential, however. Even then, they needed a penalty to beat Paraguay, and will face another very defensive-minded team (though a far more talented one) in Morocco today.
Before we preview the four quarterfinals, here is one more way to look at the odds: literally how the pie (chart) of probabilities for the eight remaining matches is divided up. There’s far more data available on the World Cup landing page, which we’ll continue to update after each game.