The Last 16, the Frontrunners, and What xG Is Telling Us

Quick news before the soccer. Our AI leaderboard is now live and tracking every MLB pick we make, day by day, wins and losses out in the open with nothing hidden. Premium members also get our two baseball minds, Scoop and Vega, and later this week we switch on AI predictions for totals and run in first inning.

Now to the World Cup, where the group stage is a memory and the knockouts have already served up two penalty shootouts and Germany on an early flight home.

Who the model thinks wins it all

Twenty-six teams are gone. Here is where our model has the title race after the first wave of the Round of 32, from ten thousand simulated tournaments:

• Argentina 24%
• France 21%
• Brazil 13%
• Spain 11%
• Morocco 8%
• Belgium 5%
• England 4%
• Colombia 3%

The number that jumps out is Morocco. They scraped into the knockouts as one of the best third-placed teams, knocked out the Netherlands on penalties, and the model now rates them the fifth most likely team to lift the trophy. The projected final is still the heavyweight one, Argentina against France, but the field behind them is tightening by the day.

What xG is, and why France should worry everyone

If you have seen us throw around the term xG, here is the plain version. Expected goals, or xG, measures the quality of the chances a team creates. A tap-in from six yards is worth close to a full goal; a hopeful shot from thirty is worth almost nothing. Add them up and you get what a team should have scored on the balance of its chances, stripped of the luck of a deflection or a worldie or a goalkeeping howler.

Which brings us to France. They have scored ten goals from 5.9 xG, the most ruthless finishing at the tournament. It is tempting to call that lucky and expect it to fall back to earth. It is not. xG assumes a league-average finisher takes the chance, and France do not have league-average finishers, they have Mbappe. Elite attacks sustainably beat their xG, and this France side is both creating and burying. That is not a hot streak waiting to cool, it is a warning.

The flip side is the graveyard. Turkey out-created their opponents by three goals of xG across the group stage and still went home, because they could not finish. Finishing has been destiny at this World Cup, and the teams surviving are the ones who are both good and clinical.

How our forecasters are doing

We track every one of our forecasters against the market, in the open, and after 19 graded games it is the disciplined ones out in front.

On picking who advances, The Sharp and Claude Hot lead at 74%, dead level with the market itself. On total goals, our blind model Claude Cold has been outstanding at 79%, with The Analyst right behind at 74%. On both teams to score, The Sharp again tops it at 68%. Add it all up and The Sharp is the most accurate forecaster on the board across every market, at roughly 70%, with The Analyst a close second.

The honest footnote: the market remains the best-calibrated forecaster we have, its probabilities are the truest even when its raw record is not the highest. Beating it is hard, and the fact that a few of our voices are managing it, on totals especially, is the whole point of the exercise. The gut-driven Diehard, for the record, is the one struggling, proof that romance is a lovely thing and a poor betting strategy.

Today's three games, read purely on xG

We have started projecting games from nothing but each team's last three matches of expected goals, no ratings, no reputations. It has been sharp: on the last-three-xG signal alone, our walk-forward test picks the winner 81% of the time, and it just called France's comfortable win over Sweden and Mexico's grind past Ecuador when the fuller model was more cautious. Here is what it says about tonight.

Belgium against Senegal is the goal-fest. Belgium have been creating 2.3 xG a game and Senegal have been leaking, so the numbers project a 2-1 Belgium win with real change left over, Belgium 71% and the over comfortably favored. Of the three games this is the one to watch for goals.

England against DR Congo is closer than the bookmakers think. England are heavy favorites on paper, but their recent xG output has been modest and DR Congo defend well, so the pure numbers make it a tight, low-scoring 1-0 England, with the under a strong lean. Do not be shocked if this one is a grind.

United States against Bosnia projects a routine home win. The USA are creating chances at a healthy clip and Bosnia have been toothless going forward, so the model lands on a 2-1 for the co-hosts, a controlled night with the States clearly on top.

See the full panel

Those are the cold xG reads. For the human angle, our four-persona panel, The Sharp, The Analyst, The Diehard and The Scout, calls all three of today's games with who advances, the goals, and the reasoning behind each pick, updated daily alongside the live bracket. See the full panel and today's picks on the World Cup page.

More tomorrow, when the last of the Round of 32 is settled and the bracket gets a little smaller.