The World Cup round of 16 wraps up on Tuesday with two games featuring teams from the Iberian Peninsula.
Spain and Portugal hope to square off in the quarterfinals as they take on Morocco and Switzerland, respectively. The question is, will they get there?
My projections simulate each game 250,000 times and are powered by my colleague BJ Cunningham‘s offensive and defensive power ratings for each team. Using his power ratings, I use something called diagonal-inflated bivariate poisson to simulate the scoring distribution for each game.
Let’s take a look at projections and best bets for Tuesday's World Cup games.
Tuesday World Cup Projections
All bets are 1 unit unless stated otherwise
Round of 16: Morocco vs. Spain (10 a.m. ET)
- Spain are 67.5% favorites to win in regulation and 76.1% to win prior to a possible penalty shootout.
- There’s a 12.7% chance this game goes to penalties.
- Overall, Spain are favored to advance at 82.4%.
- Morocco only averaged 0.47 xG in the three group games against easier competition than Spain.
- Meanwhile, Spain should control possession and feel little pressure defensively.
- Spain could win this in a blowout, especially if they unlock an early goal.
- Best Bets: Spain ML (-159 via BetRivers), Spain to Win to Nil (+130 via DraftKings)
- Bet to: -175 and +115 respectively
Round of 16: Portugal vs. Switzerland (2 p.m. ET)
- Portugal are 46.4% favorites to win in regulation and 54.1% to win prior to a possible penalty shootout.
- There’s a 15.2% chance this game goes to penalties.
- Overall, Portugal are favored to advance at 61.7%.
- Portugal have looked much worse than pre-tourney projections estimated them at.
- They've moved from 3.77 to 3.40 xG against an average international defense.
- In addition, they've only outscored their opponents by 0.25 xG per game, all while facing teams worse than Switzerland according to our power ratings.
- Switzerland have performed right around expectations.
- Best Bets: Switzerland – Draw No Bet (+220 via DraftKings) | Switzerland to Advance (+194 via FanDuel)
- Bet to: +200 and +180 respectively
Pick: Switzerland to Advance |
