The Matches
Argentina 1 (2.1)-(0.1) 2 Saudi Arabia
The biggest shock of the World Cup so far. The betting odds for this match were -700 (you would have to bet $700 to win $100) for Argentina to win, which implies a probability of 87% that they would win, taking out the house edge built into betting odds still puts Argentina over 80% favorites to win.
This was a huge upset.
So of course it was the match that I slept through because I was not anticipating that this would be the story of the day. Oh well, I have caught up with the extended highlights so that will have to supplement the stats based takes here.
This one got started with a penalty (interestingly it was very similar to the one that went uncalled in the England match), followed by three offside goals (two very close ones and one not so much).
Argentina had almost all of the ball in the first half (just shy of 70% possession) but interestingly they had less of the field tilt in that first half. Saudi Arabia couldn’t turn any of that possession into shots, but they did seem to suggest that they had some threat in them nearly matching Argentina with touches in the box at halftime 13 to 12 in favor of the South Americans.
Just after halftime, Saudi Arabia got a goal from basically nothing. A giveaway around the halfway line by Lionel Messi turned into a long ball that should have been dealt with but instead turned into a low-quality chance that was nearly blocked. Instead, it found its way into the corner and the match was level.
Just a few minutes later Saudi Arabia would take their second and third (and final) shots of the match. The first is blocked before the second is curled home from the edge of the box.
All told those three shots were all under 5% chances.
Yet Saudi Arabia turned them into 2 goals.
SOCCER!
Argentina from that point took a bunch of shots but created just one more decent chance and even that one was a tough one from a blocked shot. After that there were a lot speculative chances and that was that.
Argentina will still probably have enough to advance to the round of 16 but they made the path much harder and with a smaller margin of error.
Denmark 0 (1.2)-(1.2) 0 Tunisia
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