The individual brilliance of the early matches was eventually neutralized by countries with better all-around squads and this was a World Cup that became reasonably predictable once we escaped the group stage. But every single minute was thrilling and worth it.
Algeria Front Office
The team at Cambridge scoured over 15,000 football-specific online sources to produce the following chart.
Lionel Messi headlines the WhoScored Best XI leading up to the World Cup Final with a rating of 8.77.
In terms of winning the World Cup, Brazil are still most likely to do so (23.4%), but Argentina (19.3%) and Germany’s chances (15.6%) are much closer than many believed prior to the start of the tourn
Group B features top overall Spain, followed by 14th ranked Chile, 15th ranked Holland and 62nd ranked Australia.