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 Africa remains the only country with “IN” status. A couple are so close that it’s close to a formality (Australia could have officially clinched it had other results gone their way). Some high-powered teams are in some high-powered trouble now.
The full qualification chances for every team can be found here.
The National Team Ratings can be found here.
Now that’s Close
Spain = 99.99%; Australia 99.98%; Japan = 99.94%; Netherlands = 99.89%; Brazil = 99.87%. That’s right, the Spanish team missed once out of 10,000 sims. The Bosnians actually won that group a handful of times, but in all of those cases except one, the Spanish won the second place playoff. Australia and Japan been on the brink for a while now, and Brazil haven’t been far away. The Dutch were a little further away, but after taking care of business against the Scots and the Macedonians, a repeat of 2002 (when the Dutch failed to qualify) appears to be extremely unlikely. All these teams should clear their schedules for summer 2010.
Going Up
Slovakia = 69.14%; Saudi Arabia = 66.16%; Serbia = 71.04%; Gabon 26.25%; Tunisia = 51.97%. These are the five teams whose number of qualifications went up the most since last time. After a big friendly loss to England, Slovakia stunned the Czechs in Prague, with Erik Jendrisek’s goal in the 82nd minute turning the entire group on its head. The Saudis came from behind in both of their wins, which included an absolutely massive win in Tehran against the Iranians. The Serbian win in Romania coupled with other good results for them, has made them heavy favorites for first or second in that group (the same can be said for France). Over to Africa, a stunning 2-1 upset over Morocco in Casablanca has Gabon off to a surprisingly good start, with Cameroon’s loss in Togo helping as well. They’re still a bit of longshots from here, but are in the game now. Wins on the road in Africa are never easy, and Tunisia’s 2-1 win over Kenya in Kenya sees them top of their group with Nigeria’s scoreless draw on the road in Mozambique. The first showdown between Tunisia and Nigeria is on June 20.
Disaster
Iran = 44.78%; Czech Republic = 37.08%; Romania = 0.63%; Morocco = 24.20%; Turkey = 15.47%. As you can see, the teams whose number of qualifications dropped the most have a lot to do with the above results. The home losses by Iran and the Czechs were truly disastrous and now they both may be forced to win playoffs to make it in. Romania took a blowtorch to whatever chances they had with losses in two games they needed to win, they’re almost certainly done. Morocco was going to have trouble with Cameroon to begin with, spotting Gabon three points with a home loss makes things that much more difficult. Spain is a tough team, no doubt, but Turkey losing both games to the Spanish and the Bosnian’s sweep of Belgium puts them in pretty bad shape even for a playoff.
Portuguese Suicide Watch
Portugal = 15.51%. It just keeps getting worse for Portugal. Their chances were cut in half, as the scoreless draw at home to Sweden just isn’t good enough at this point. It may seem like it’s still early, but there are quality teams in that group and Portugal is way behind. They are in some pretty big trouble now, and even if they start playing better, they may still need outside help now.
Local News
USA = 96.86%; Mexico = 93.99%; Costa Rica = 71.59%; Honduras = 66.42%; Trinidad and Tobago = 2.20%; El Salvador = 1.13%. While the USA and Mexico both hurt themselves slightly with not so great road results, their home wins keep them well positioned to qualify. Honduras did themselves a favor with the home win against Mexico, though they’d be even better off if they could have held the late lead against T&T. Costa Rica joins the top 4, and to have any shot the bottom two need to start winning instead of merely playing well (which they have done at times). Mexico probably wants to pick up a road win at some point to give them a little margin of error at home.
And some lovely parting gifts
Albania, United Arab Emirates, Peru, Macedonia, Moldova, Georgia, Iceland= 0.00%. All of the above teams went from from having some small chance last time to going 0 for 10,000 this time. Zombie Iceland returned from the dead last time, but I think are probably killed off for good now. The UAE lost their last best hope after blowing a late lead against the Saudis. There are some decent sides among the rest, but nobody great and things just didn’t go their way. Peru needs to get its house in order. They should be better than this.
Off Topic
Not related to World Cup qualifying, But a big congratulations go out to the Guam National Football Team who won their very first game against a full FIFA member by defeating Mongolia 1-0 in an East Asian Cup preliminary round. They also drew 2-2 with Macau in that round. I mention this simply because for years I couldn’t decide who was the worst of the full teams: American Samoa or Guam. Both were renown for getting 15+ goals dropped on them with regularity. With these results, Guam establishes that it almost certainly is not them, at least not anymore. Sincerely, a lot of unknown people probably did a lot of unknown work to try and help that team improve and they should be very, very proud of the accomplishment.
The next round of qualifiers are in June, and I’m certain some teams will reach that 100% mark then.
13 responses so far ↓
1 scaryice // Apr 2, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Hi Voros, great work. I wanna mention a few things.
1) UAE, Malta, and San Marino were officially eliminated on Wednesday. So of course they’re at zero.
2) It would be really nice if you could give us the odds of exact qualification as well as the odds of going to the the playoffs.
3) It would also be nice if you could list the odds by group in addition to the big list. I’ve done that for you and linked to you on my blog here:
http://usasoccer.blogspot.com/2009/04/voros-2010-world-cup-qualification-odds.html
4) Based on my analysis from the other day, what I found is that Portugal’s campaign seemingly comes down to the 9/5 game at Denmark. If they win that game, then they should almost certainly make the playoffs. I wonder what their odds would be if you gave them that result?
2 Mikael // Apr 3, 2009 at 12:48 am
I love how you take a scientific approach to all the mock predictions I make all the time. However, I think you can safely remove UAE, Malta and San Marino, because these teams not only fail to qualify in any of 10000 sims, but are mathematically unable to qualify for the World Cup no matter how the rest of the games play out.
3 Lusankya // Apr 3, 2009 at 4:44 am
Hi, how do you simulate the UEFA play-offs? We still don’t know if or how they seed the teams.
Otherwise great jobs, I just love such things.
4 Voros // Apr 3, 2009 at 6:02 am
I really didn’t know if any teams had actually been eliminated yet, so thanks for the heads up. There will be more of that as time goes on. I’ll try and keep a heads up on that, but you’ll have to excuse me if I miss one.
On playoffs versus direct qualification, yes I can do that (I think). We’ve got a couple of months, so give me a day or two and I’ll see what I can come up with.
I was assuming the UEFA playoffs were unseeded. I do have it set up to eliminate the results of the first team in the group to eliminate the worst second finisher (that was kind of a pain but I managed it).
Giving Portugal a 1-0 win at Denmark, they still only qualified 378 times in 1,000 tries (that’s enough to get the general idea). Considering that’s going to be a tall order (particularly the way they’re playing), They legitimately have a lot to worry about.
5 ERic // Apr 3, 2009 at 11:42 am
If I remember right, UEFA seeded in that they took the top four teams and bottom four teams and put them in buckets to pair them up. Don’t recall what they used for top and bottom four, but I’m sure it’s around somewhere on the web. I saw some crack about it on BS sometime in the past day or two, so it makes me suspect that it wasn’t FIFA rankings that were used for seeding. Not that the FIFA rankings don’t deserve getting pot-shots.
6 Voros // Apr 3, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I didn’t know that. In any event, unless someone like France were drop into 2nd and meet a surprise team, most of the likely matchups are going to be relatively even. Very few should be any more than 65/35. So I doubt that knowing the seeding would change the above numbers too much. Different story for the World Cup obviously.
7 Voros // Apr 3, 2009 at 2:53 pm
One other interesting note. Scotland actually finished second in their group quite often. But they were also by far the team most likely to be the worst finishing second place team. So they didn’t actually make the playoffs very often.
8 Marko // Apr 4, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Fantastic job!
But i also doubt, that Scotland will be the worst runner-up. They won in Iceland already and has a chance to grab points in norway.
I would like to know, what was the highest amount of points that the worst runner-up had. It must be somewhere near 13, right?
Another question: Do you calculate the whole campaign through with the current standings or do you let your next results have influence on the rankings and strength of forthcoming matchdays?
And I would like to know, if there has been 1 or 2 calculations in your 10.000 calculations, where at least the win/draw/loss tendency of the euro qualifiers matches were exaclty the same like on the recent matchdays.
9 Edgar // Apr 5, 2009 at 11:13 pm
In 2006, UEFA used the FIFA Ranking to seed the play-offs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification_(play-off_UEFA)
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11 Voros // Apr 6, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Edgar,
I’ll try and incorporate that into the next set of simulations (shouldn’t be too hard). Thanks for the info.
12 Seadondo // Apr 8, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I’m curious as to why Croatia’s chances are so much lower than Switzerland’s or Sweden’s. Does Croatia have a significantly higher chance of not making the playoffs than Switzerland or Sweden?
Along with France, Croatia appears to be one of the stronger second-place finishers. It’s just a matter of what their likelihood is in being selected for the playoffs.
13 Voros // Apr 8, 2009 at 1:56 pm
The main reason is that Switzerland or Sweden can still win their group. England has, more or less, wrapped up Croatia’s group. The percentages reflect that as well as the chances of winning a playoff.
Croatia also still has the Ukraine to deal with, and the Ukraine’s game in hand is an extra one remaining against the two minnows. Sweden and the Swiss have opened up a little more daylight between themselves and their competition (Portugal and Israel respectively).
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