European soccer expert picks Sunday's 2018 World Cup final
Wednesday July 11, 2018
The stage is set. The 2018 World Cup final will be decided when France battles Croatia on Sunday at 11 a.m. ET. Sportsbooks list France as a -110 money line favorite, meaning you'd need to wager $110 on a French victory to win $100. Croatia is going off at +360 World Cup odds (risk $100 to win $360), while a draw in regulation returns +225. To simply bet on which team wins, France is -210 and Croatia is +175. The over-under for total goals scored in this 2018 World Cup match is 2.
Before you lock in your 2018 World Cup picks for France vs. Croatia, you need to see what European football expert David Sumpter has to say. Sumpter is an applied mathematician who wrote "Soccermatics," a book that explains how math works inside the sport. Along with other experienced analysts, Sumpter developed the powerful Soccerbot model.
The Soccerbot reads current odds and all team performance data, calculates key metrics and predicts upcoming matches. In nearly three seasons since its inception, the Soccerbot is up an incredible 1,800 percent on bookmakers' closing odds.
The model is crushing the World Cup knockout stage. It strongly recommending Croatia as an underdog at +135 against England in the semifinals. The result: Croatia stamped its ticket to the Russia 2018 final with a thrilling 2-1 victory.
It also correctly predicted draws in regulation for Spain-Russia (+280), Croatia-Denmark (+225) and England-Colombia (+215) and was all over France beating Uruguay in regulation to reach the semifinals, not to mention Brazil and Belgium cruising in their Round of 16 matchups, just to name a few of its big calls. Anyone who has followed it is way, way up.
Now, the Soccerbot has crunched the numbers and broken down every angle of Croatia vs. France. We can tell you the model is leaning Under 2 goals, but its much stronger play is on the money line. And you can only see that 2018 World Cup pick over at SportsLine.
The model knows Croatia is appearing in its first ever World Cup final. Croatia defeated England 2-1 thanks to Mario Mandzukic's winning goal in extra time. That hasn't been the only drama for Croatia, which won its first two World Cup knockout stage games against Denmark and Russia on penalty kicks.
Croatia opened at 60-1 World Cup odds to win the entire tournament; entering the semis, it was still the underdog at 4-1.
Meanwhile, France is appearing in its third World Cup final since 1998, and the 2018 World Cup final will be the sixth meeting between France and Croatia. Les Bleus have won three of the previous five matches, while the other two have ended in a draw.