World Cup Probabilities and Odds – Mid September Update

We Global Football is dedicated to providing the best coverage of international football out there. Included is providing an update on where each team stands in World Cup Qualification after the September 10th matches are played. Thus far 10 teams have already qualified for Brazil:

• Brazil
• Argentina
• Japan
• Australia
• Korea Republic
• Iran
• USA
• Costa Rica
• Italy
• Netherlands

There are 50 teams remaining fighting for 22 spots. We’ll list where each of those teams stands within their Group and then provide an overall list of odds of reaching the World Cup for these teams.

 

CAF

As the final matchups are not yet known in CAF, we compiled a matrix of odds for the CAF sides. The Pot 1 teams with our rankings are:

• Ivory Coast (10)
• Nigeria (24)
• Algeria (32)
• Ghana (34)
• Cape Verde Islands (69)

The Pot 2 teams with our rankings are:

• Egypt (40)
• Burkina Faso (49)
• Senegal (52)
• Cameroon (66)
• Ethiopia (76)

Here are the odds that each of these teams qualifies for Brazil:

Obviously if you’re in Pot 2, you’re hoping to draw Cape Verde. We’ll see what happens.

CONCACAF/OFC

USA and Costa Rica have qualified for Brazil. That leaves 4 teams fighting for 1 automatic qualifier and 1 home-and-home with New Zealand.

We don’t have Jamaica qualifying in any of our scenarios. New Zealand will face off with the 4th place CONCACAF team, which is looking more and more like it’ll be Mexico. That’s not good news for New Zealand as Mexico is our 2nd highest ranked CONCACAF team despite being in 4th place. Combining the CONCACAF and New Zelaand odds, we have each team’s chances of reaching Brazil at:

 

CONMEBOL/AFC

Jordan will take on the 5th place team from CONMEBOL, which will be either Chile, Ecuador or Uruguay according to our simulations. Venezuela is still alive but our predictor thinks they have no shot. The CONMEBOL side, whoever it is, will surely be a large favorite. Let’s first take a look at how each team stands in CONMEBOL: Also note that Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru have been officially eliminated from qualifying.

As we do not have Venezuela advancing under any scenario, they are not included in the chart below which combines Jordan and the CONMEBOL sides:

 

UEFA

The final 13 spots in the World Cup belong to UEFA nations. Italy and the Netherlands have clinched which leaves 11 remaining spots. Without getting into too many details, here are the odds for the 39 remaining active UEFA nations of finishing in 1st or 2nd in their group:

Team	1	2
Spain	1000	0
Belgium	1000	0
Switzerland	998	2
Germany	995	5
Bosnia-Herzegovina	869	131
Russia	727	273
England	724	212
Portugal	273	727
Ukraine	245	693
Greece	131	869
Croatia	0	1000
France	0	1000
Sweden	5	787
Iceland	2	775
Bulgaria	0	704
Romania	0	667
Denmark	0	269
Austria	0	208
Turkey	0	167
Hungary	0	166
Norway	0	159
Montenegro	29	93
Slovenia	0	46
Czech Republic	0	26
Albania	0	18
Poland	2	2
Armenia	0	1
Israel	0	0
Republic of Ireland	0	0

 

As it is way too early in the game to know how the Pots will shake out, we have assigned equal weighting to teams projected to finish 2nd.

 

Overall

Here is the complete list of odds for teams to reach the World Cup. We only have 4 teams that are still mathematically alive with a 0% chance of reaching the World Cup.

We hope you enjoyed reading. We look forward to the upcoming matches and hope to see your team in Brazil