Knockout Crash Course
Haven’t been paying attention to the World Cup yet? Now’s the time to start with the field paired in half from 32 down to 16. Stakes are cranked even higher meaning there’s no margin for error when it comes to winning soccer’s greatest prize. Even if you’ve resisted the first 48 matches, 16 contests remain that will have you riveted, especially from a betting perspective. Not only did we prepare a podcast covering each of the upcoming fixtures but we’ve included a best bets segment from Fox Sports Live and a compelling read about how bettors should handle shootouts in their handicapping. Sit down, strap in, and get ready for 4 days of the best competition in sport.
Complete list of updated odds click here
The OTL Podcast (with Drew Collins and James Kempton)
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One World Cup Knockout Game in Five Decided by Penalties
Sports Interaction calculates odds on World Cup games being decided by shootout
The FIFA World Cup moves into its knockout phase on Saturday, when it’s win or go home for the sixteen teams left in the competition. Since 1978 the spectre of a penalty shootout looms for teams that can’t find a result after extra-time. Penalty shootouts are one of the great pieces of theatre in world sports, but exactly how likely are they to happen? Sports Interaction has crunched the numbers to find out.
“Penalty shootouts are thrilling moments in sports,” says Frank Doyle, a spokesman for Sports Interaction. “Players hate them, and so does the nation that’s just lost one, but for everybody else they’re like Old West showdowns with the entire population of the world watching. What could be more dramatic than that?”
1982 was the last World Cup to use two group rounds to produce the tournament finalists. The 1978 final between Argentina and the Netherlands was the only knockout game played during the tournament (although some group games were knockout by circumstance, of course). In 1982, the second group stage produced two semi-finals, one of which, France v West Germany, produced the first ever penalty shoot-out in the World Cup.
The current bracket-based system was introduced in the 1986 World Cup and has been with us since – a sweet sixteen followed by quarter-finals, semi-finals, a third-place game and the Final.
There have been 118 knockout games played in the World Cup since the penalty shootout was introduced. Thirty-eight of these, 32%, needed extra-time to be settled. But of those thirty-eight, twenty-two couldn’t be decided by extra-time and went on to shootouts.
In terms of odds, this means there is a 100/30 chance of any World Cup knockout stage game going to extra time, and it’s 4/1 against any World Cup knockout game going to penalties. But once a game has gone into extra time, the chances of a shootout being needed to separate the sides becomes an odds-on proposition, with a shootout being necessary in three of every five games.
Does the stage of the competition matter? Yes, it does. The most likely stage for a match to be decided by shootout is the quarter-final stage. Ten of the twenty-two penalty-shootouts in World Cup history have occurred in the quarter-finals, with an astonishing three of the four quarter-finals in Mexico ’86 decided by shootout. The only one that didn’t was the one that required the intervention of the “Hand of God” – Argentina’s (in)famous win over England, when Diego Maradona attributed his controversial first goal to “the hand of God and the head of Maradona.”
Shootouts are less likely in the Sweet Sixteen, where one game in eight is likely to need penalty kicks. The least likely round of all is the third-place game, only one of which has even gone into extra-time – Belgium beating France in 1986.
“I’m never quite sure how players manage to pull themselves together after losing a World Cup semi-final to play for third place,” says Frank Doyle. “Surely, to ask them to take part in a shootout after all that would be cruel and unusual punishment – even by FIFA standards.”
