2018 FIFA World Cup Predictions

If you’ve been a regular at Royal Blue Mersey for a little while, you’ve probably noticed that the staff here very much enjoys making predictions.

Now, it isn’t that we think we’re particularly good at them – more so that we enjoy making fun of each other when we collectively fail. So with the 2018 FIFA World Cup approaching this week, your favorite Everton bloggers have taken to making predictions for the sport’s biggest event!

A few weeks ago, I requested that each of our writers send to me a complete World Cup bracket, including their predicted final standings for each group and their projected resulting knockout stages. Let’s start by taking a look at our staff’s group stage winners and runners up in groups A-D.

In Group A, the majority of our writers seem to be following conventional wisdom – Luis Suarez and Uruguay leading the way through a pretty pedestrian group, with Egypt finishing second ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. Of course, if Mohamed Salah proves not to be healthy for the start of the tournament, we could have some unhappy writers.

Matt, Tom, and Zach do have the hosts, Russia, going through – Matt and Tom at the expense of Egypt, and Zach at the expense of Uruguay.

In Group B, it’s a wave of Spain and Portugal. Eight writers have Spain winning the group, with three picking Portugal. Only Calvin has Portugal bowing out here, with Morocco finishing ahead.

Everyone has France making it out of Group C, with nine writers picking the French to win the group.

Group D is similar – all our writers have Argentina making it out alive, with only Sean predicting a second-place finish for Lionel Messi and his compatriots.

On to Groups E-H!

There is substantially more uniformity on this side of the groups, starting with Group E. Everyone has Brazil winning, with the second-place votes split between each of the other three participating countries.

In Group F, all but one of the picks are exactly the same. Everyone has Germany winning and Mexico finishing second, except for Sean, who has Sweden beating out Mexico.

Group G is Belgium’s to lose, according to our writers. All participants, sans Zach, have Jordan Pickford and England going through in second place.

Group H is messier than the rest of the groups in this part of the alphabet. Three different countries won at least one first-place vote, and all four have at least one writer predicting that they’ll survive into the knockout rounds. James Rodriguez and Colombia are easily the most popular pick though.

That brings us to the knockout rounds. For ease of viewing, I’ve just included each writers’ semifinalists, finalists, and World Cup champion.

France is a popular pick to make the semis. Nine of 11 writers have them in the final four – or perhaps a better way to say that is nine of our 11 writers are very concerned with France’s 1-1 draw against the United States this weekend.

Brazil is almost as popular in the top half of the bracket, making the semifinals according to six of our writers. Belgium is next, garnering five semifinal votes.

Brian L. and Zach have the only two outliers on this half of the knockouts – Brian with Peru and Zach with Portugal.

The bottom half of the bracket is dominated by Argentina, Spain, and Germany. In fact, no other teams feature in our predictions for this semifinal! Germany is in every writer’s semifinal, while Argentina gets seven votes and Spain four.

Despite the uniformity in much of the semifinals, we actually are pretty divided on who will make the tournament’s main event. No matchup was predicted by more than two writers – those are Belgium v. Germany, Brazil v. Argentina, France v. Germany, and Brazil v. Germany.

The other predicted finals are Brazil v. Spain, France v. Argentina, and Portugal v. Spain.

Ultimately then, our predictions for World Cup Champion break down like this.

Who are your picks to make the knockout rounds, and your subsequent finalists and winners?