We're down to the last eight teams in the 2022 World Cup, and Friday's games feature four big names.
Brazil and Croatia kick things off, followed by Netherlands vs. Argentina in the afternoon game.
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 dive into Friday's World Cup quarterfinal games.
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Friday World Cup Match Projections
All bets are 1 unit unless stated otherwise
Quarterfinals: Croatia vs. Brazil (10 a.m. ET)
- Brazil are 64.7% favorites to win in regulation and 73.6% to win prior to a possible penalty shootout.
- There’s a 14.4% chance this game goes to penalties.
- Overall, Brazil are favored to advance at 80.8%.
- Brazil have the strongest defense in the world.
- That's buoyed by an offense that has dominated possession, leaving Brazil with very little defensive work.
- Overall, they've allowed only 0.36 xG per game in the World Cup.
- Croatia have averaged 1.26 xG per game against teams not nearly as strong as Brazil.
- The model is showing value on Brazil holding Croatia to a shutout.
- Best Bet: Croatia under 0.5 goals (-110 via DraftKings)
- Bet to: -125
Quarterfinals: Netherlands vs. Argentina (2 p.m. ET)
- Argentina are 45.7% to win in regulation and 53.4% to win prior to a possible penalty shootout.
- There’s an 18.2% chance this game goes to penalties.
- Overall, Argentina are favored to advance at 62.6%.
- This game reminds me of Mexico vs. Argentina, although Netherlands have a slightly better offensive rating than Mexico.
- That game saw a total of 0.54 xG produced.
- Both teams have underperformed offensively in the World Cup.
- These are also the two hardest defenses each team has faced.
- There's value in a low-scoring game.
- I am going risky with the under 1.5, but there's also value on the under 2.5 if you want to be safer.
- Best Bet: Under 1.5 (+184 via FanDuel) or Under 2.5 (-170 via FanDuel)
- Bet to: +170 or -175
