World Cup: Day 1 Quarter-Final Matchup Previews

The Quarter-Final draw is a bit lopsided, with some of the weaker teams in the round of 16 competing in Saturday's opening matches. I wanted to look at the team level - passing, possession, territory, shooting - to see if anything stands out.

Match 1, Saturday:

Neither South Korea nor Uruguay are big passing teams, while South Korea had better possession (50% to 45%) and a larger share of weighted passing. On the other hand, Uruguay was much more able to prevent opponent shots, and it seems unlikely that they allowed zero goals to South Korea's six by luck alone.

Match 2, Saturday:

The United States could hardly have asked for a better opponent in the first round - Ghana is a slightly higher-event team than the US, but they're no better at possession (48% for Ghana to 50% for the US). They also had some of the worst shooting luck in the entire tournament, scoring twice on penalty kicks and zero times during play. The US, on the other hand, was the victim of two questionable calls on goals, which suggests that, if anything, they created better scoring opportunities for themselves. The main factor in Ghana's favor seems to be home-continent advantage - I'm skeptical as to how heavily that should be weighted.

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