Finally, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is nearing its pinnacle. The real fight starts, giving supporters shivers and despair. There are only eight teams left: the elite eight.
We always had the opportunity to forecast games thanks to football and always came up with our own plays. There is always a place for forecasts, whether from casual football fans or football commentators, from simple fan arguments to fully data-based analytic predictions.
Additionally, trends and trend breakdowns can be found in football. With France breaking the “world cup curse” for defending champions, a pattern has already been broken in this World Cup.
Let’s examine yet another intriguing pattern followed by the last three world cups, from South Africa to Russia. Will Qatar experience the same thing? Wait and see, shall we?
In each of the previous three world cup tournaments, the winner overcame the other team with a header goal scored by a defender, either in the round of eight or the semifinal. Spain defeated Germany in the 2010 World Cup semi-final thanks to a second-half header goal by Carles Puyol. In the 2014 quarterfinal, Mats Hummels’ header goal gave Germany the victory over France. Samuel Umtiti scored the vital header goal against Belgium in the 2018 semifinal to put France into the final.
In this world cup will it be Marquinhos for Brazil or Nicolás Otamendi for Argentina or Virgil van Dijk for Dutch or Ibrahima Konaté for the reigning champions or Pepe for Portugal or John Stones for Three Lions or Romain Saïss for The Atlas Lions…..let’s wait and watch will the trend follows or not.