The U.S. soccer team drew the Group of Death in Brazil. But they may have life after the first round.
The squad’s defeat of Ghana raised their hopes of advancing. Stats guru Nate Silver puts the Americans’ chances of moving on to the next round at 68 percent. He gave the team a one in three chance prior to their victory over Ghana.
Here, directly from his post at FiveThirtyEight.com, is the way Silver outlines the possibilities of U.S. pushing into the round of sixteen:
- Win twice, advance to the knockout stage.
- Win once and draw once, advance.
- Draw twice, advance.
- Win once and lose once, almost certainly advance (there’s one highly unlikely mathematical exception).
- Lose twice, and almost certainly go out (there’s one highly unlikely mathematical exception).
- Draw once and lose once, and it gets complicated. It’s considerably better for the U.S. to draw against Portugal and lose to Germany than the other way around.
Silver ran simulations through a computer 10,000 times to reach his conclusions. Alas, the United States team plays Germany and Portugal but once on a field and not 10,000 times inside of a machine.
The US-Portugal match takes place at 6 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. The Americans finish up the first round on Thursday at noon against Germany.