We’re down to the last four teams, and the favorites, Brazil, have been knocked out. The good news for them, I suppose, is that when they got knocked out, they also became the first team to qualify for the 2014 World Cup. Silver linings and such.
The National Team Rankings have been recalculated (this is the most I’ve ever recalculated these things in such a short time frame) and because of Germany’s impressive back to back wins over teams ranked just ahead of them, they’ve surged into fourth place. Now three of the final four teams are ranked in the top four (Spain and the Netherlands remain 2nd and 3rd respectively, same as pre-tournament). The rankings can be found here.
And here is the table for the remaining four teams and the chances of each to finish in each of the remaining four spots:
| Country | 4th Place | 3rd Place | Second Place | Winners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | 27.13% | 33.53% | 19.55% | 19.78% |
| Netherlands | 16.96% | 18.07% | 32.84% | 32.13% |
| Spain | 14.00% | 25.33% | 24.36% | 36.30% |
| Uruguay | 41.91% | 23.06% | 23.24% | 11.79% |
The numbers assume that the third place game will be contested as tightly as any other World Cup game, and we all are pretty sure that’s not going to be the case. So obviously take the differences between 3rd and 4th with a grain of salt.
I wasn’t sure which team would be the favorites now. Though Spain is the highest ranked team remaining, they have a more difficult opponent than the Netherlands do (though Uruguay I suspect will give the Dutch all they can handle). The numbers however suggest Spain is the favorite followed by the Dutch, Germans and Uruguayans in that order.
Here are the semi-final match numbers:
Team Goals Advance% Netherlands 1.4 64.97% Uruguay 0.9 35.03% Spain 1.4 60.66% Germany 1.0 39.34%
A request: if anyone has a link to where I can find the pre-cup National Team ratings for ELO, Nate’s SPI and for Castro, could you post it in the comments. I’ve come up empty thus far. After all the games are done, I’m going to do a quick comparison to see how various systems did. This will help me identify where my rankings could use some improvement and what to tweak. The ELO site has been down for weeks. Thanks.
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