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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 qualification chances for all remaining teams can be found here.

So close!!

Australia = 99.96%. A draw away to Japan was a very good result for Australia, but a win would have essentially sealed the deal. The failed to qualify 4 times out of 10,000. Any Aussie readers out there should probably not be making alternate plans for next summer. Japan remains well positioned to qualify as well.

Switch

USA = 97.90%, Mexico = 95.52%, Costa Rica = 77.20%, Honduras = 56.85%, Korea DPR = 36.43%, Saudi Arabia = 30.75, Bahrain = 17.96%, Uzbekistan = 4.58%. The USA and Costa Rica both won their home matches against Mexico and Honduras (respectively) by 2-0 scorelines. This very nice start for them essentially reverses the positions each were in before the matches. Both the USA and Mexico remain likely to qualify, but now the USA is up in a very nice place to be indeed. Costa Rica really made a nice move however, jumping up nearly 20 percentage points. The North Korean win over the Saudis also sees them leapfrog their opponent. Both have much work to do. Finally Bahrain’s big road win over Uzbekistan keeps them alive and puts Uzbekistan on a morphine drip. The simulation results for all of these are affected not just by their effects in the standings, but also the new ratings with these results factored in.

Congratulations, you both lose

Trinidad and Tobago = 4.57%, El Salvador = 1.68%. T&T really hurt themselves by not securing the win with a 2-0 lead in their easiest road match in the group. El Salvador really hurt themselves by not winning the most winnable game they will have in the group. Both see their chances go down with the 2-2 draw. Their best hope from here looks like a sudden and unexpected meltdown from a Honduran team who appears to be superior on paper. And then hope to play out of their skins against the 5th place team from South America.

Lookout!! Zombie!!

Iceland = 0.02%. The most amusing artifact of the simulation process was the resurrection of Iceland without them actually playing a qualifier (nor anyone else in their group playing one for that matter). If you remember, Iceland failed to qualify in any of the 10,000 simulations last time. This time, a minor 2-0 friendly win over Liechtenstein was enough to bump their ratings so that they now managed twice in 10,000 tries; like a Ben Wallace free throw. Iceland is probably going to be the only country to have to suffer being killed off twice.

More sims to come as more qualifiers are played.