I will be doing today's games as Sukhdev is mourning last night's debut of England against the USA. The English start reminded me of the typical Spain start as per our blog entry Reminiscences of a Spaniard. It just seems that certain countries' players have continuous lapses of confidence, one World Cup after another. I want to highlight Heskey's selfless pass to Gerrard on the goal. Heskey is an underrated English player.
But the England 1 USA 1 was the Isthmus Partners Simulator's fifth most likely result. And the Argentina 1 Nigeria 0 was the likeliest Simulator result. As Sukhdev suspected in yesterday's blog, South Korea upset the model with a 2-0 win over Greece. Poor Greece, this is the last thing that country needed for its morale.
Today some commentators are warning that Argentina suffers "Messi dependence". With a player like that, I would gladly suffer dependence. As I am almost 40 it was great to see Veron at age 35 in top form.
What about today's games? The Simulator score predictions are:
Algeria is clear favourite.
Serbia is favoured to win over Ghana.
And Germany is as expected a strong favourite over Australia.
However, looking at the results above my intuition is that the model underrepresents the potential of Slovenia, Ghana and Australia. Particularly, the Australians are fierce competitors in any sport. The Germans better be prepared mentally or they will go the way of France and England.
Good luck to today's teams.
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