Croatia’s dazzling quarter-final win over Brazil not only stunned the footballing world, but it also flummoxed Kashef, Al Jazeera’s AI predictor — only for a moment though.
Our robot correctly predicted Argentina’s climactic victory over the Dutch on Friday, the second quarter-final match of the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Kashef now turns to the last day of the quarter-finals, sizing up the odds in the clash on Saturday between Morocco and Portugal.
Kashef stands behind Portugal
Kahsef is predicting that Morocco’s fairytale World Cup run, which has ignited a wave of support across Africa and the Arab world, will unfortunately end today by a sizable margin.
Kashef heavily favours Portugal, giving the team a 66 percent chance of dashing the Atlas Lions’ hopes of becoming the first-ever Arab and African team to make it to the World Cup semi-finals.
Kashef has compiled more than 200 metrics, including the number of wins, goals scored, FIFA rankings and more, from matches played over the past century, to reach this conclusion.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s presence — or absence — on the field could make all the difference in Saturday’s outcome. But it is unclear whether the Portuguese captain will start against Morocco after he was benched in the last-16 match against Switzerland.
Portugal and Morocco have faced off only twice before, with the North African team edging Portugal 3-1 in 1986, before Portugal levelled the field with a 1-0 win in 2018.
Who is going to win the World Cup?
After 58 matches at World Cup 2022, Kashef has a 67 percent accuracy rate. He correctly predicted seven of the eight round-of-16 matches after momentarily faltering in the upset-filled group stage.
After every match, Kashef reruns the model to predict the outcome of the next game all the way through to the final.
Predicting match results is no easy task – external factors like team morale or player fitness make a big difference in how the game goes.
See if you can outsmart Kashef and predict today’s winners by playing our AI game here.
