What’s your team’s path to the World Cup title?
And which group-stage matches are actually worth buying tickets to?
If you’re reading this while it’s super fresh in your inbox, I’ll be doing a Substack Live with Galen Druke today (Tuesday) at 2:30 p.m. to discuss what life in New York is like when the Knicks are good … and the Maine Democratic primary, which is being held tonight. Come join us in the Substack App, or we’ll post a video of the conversation later.
This newsletter aims to cover a lot of bases. We’re aware there’s a lot of political news and sports news. We’re working overtime to cover these beats; I’m not sure we’ve ever published so much in such a compressed time period before.
And life can be wonderful in early June, especially if you live in a temperate city like New York. So we’re also aware that even the substantial number of sports fans on the Silver Bulletin mailing list are not necessarily grappling with the fact that the World Cup will begin on Thursday. The opening games are in Mexico; the United States’s first match is set for Friday night in Los Angeles. (See here for a more detailed outlook on the U.S.’s prospects.)
However, I did want to give you one more pitch for our World Cup predictions. We’ll update these projections every day throughout the tournament. But today’s newsletter provides some bonus World Cup content inspired by reader suggestions. I’ll take advantage of our model to answer two common questions:
What is each country’s most likely path to the World Cup title?
And if you’re thinking of watching or even attending a match, which group-stage games will have the greatest impact on the eventual outcome of the tournament? And might be most worth buying tickets for?
Paths to the World Cup title
With a 32-team knockout-stage bracket in place for the first time ever, there’s basically no avoiding that your favorite soccer team will eventually have to defeat some tough opponents. To be honest, the group stage is rather forgiving, with two-thirds of teams set to advance into the “playoffs”. However, our simulations suggest that group-stage slots are far from equal. There actually is an advantage in most cases to winning your group. And although the top 8 of 12 third-place finishers will also advance — this World Cup format is practically giving out participation trophies — these paths are generally pernicious, yielding tougher R32 and R16 opponents.
So here’s one fun way to look at the group stage. Conditional upon finishing first or second in the group, or qualifying from the 3rd-place slot1, what are your team’s most likely opponents in every subsequent round? And what are its odds of taking home the FIFA World Cup Trophy?
This is one of those times when I’m going to show you the data first and explain it later. As a warning in case you’re a fan of Uzbekistan or something, I’ve restricted the outlook to the top 30 among the 48 teams. This basically covers everyone, including co-hosts Mexico, Canada and the United States. But the bottom 18 teams are so unlikely to win that the simulation results are mostly statistical noise, even though we ran 200K simulations today instead of our usual 100K.