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Egypt’s win at home over Rwanda is the last qualifier for another month, so let’s have a look see at how things are shaping up. The updated National Team Rankings can be found here. Full qualification chances can be found here.

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David writes in a request: I was wondering if it would be possible for you retroactively to run simulations for the Confederations Cup before the last games were played in Group B. I realize how unlikely the U.S. advancing was, I’m just curious how many times it would have happened in your simulations. Was this […]

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That’s as Bad as I’ve Seen the US Look in a Long Time In my case, that might be _ever_ since I didn’t follow the sport back in the 80s. Update on US Qualification chances: USA = What Difference Does It Make%

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Someone reading that title would be almost certain this is a political post, and not a post about Asian World Cup Qualifying. They’d, of course, be wrong. I’ll get to the update later on Thursday but a fascinating “life meets theory” moment evolved today when Saudi Arabia and North Korea came face to face with […]

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Asia finishes its group stages in a couple of days and Africa plays more matches in a week, but the rest of the world waits until August (South America until September). An important note: Iran plays an absolutely critical World Cup qualifier at South Korea in their final Group Stage match.

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This weekend qualifiers are over, so let’s see how everyone is faring going into the midweek matches. The full qualification chances for every team can be found here. The National Team Ratings can be found here.

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One of the best parts about making mistakes is it gives you opportunities for explanations. I’ve re-run the 10,000 simulations correcting the coding mistake which meant Scotland was always the 2nd place team in Group 9 in UEFA. So many of the changes in results are due to this adjustment. But some aren’t.

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Looking over my latest post (since removed since the numbers are a little wrong), something jumped out at me: of the 11 times the Netherlands didn’t win their group, they didn’t qualify from the playoffs a single time. This meant that either they had some really bad luck in those playoffs, or there was something […]

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A lot more matches were played this week and some teams are moving up and down from the qualification chances posted last time. I was amazed after running the sims that no one hit the 10,000 out of 10,000 mark (though I think if I ran it again one might). So at the moment South […]

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So we had a few more qualifiers played, some friendlies to help assess team strength and now its time to update from our last installment. To review, I simulate the remaining World Cup qualifiers based on the Statistical National Team rankings I do and then assess the qualification chances of the remaining teams. The full […]

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