We said: Brazil 2-0 Ghana
Ghana should be boosted by the addition of a few top quality fresh faces, but we still expect Brazil to have too much for them on Friday.
Despite leaving Jesus at home, Tite has a scary array of attacking quality to select from while generally keeping his side well-stocked in terms of numbers behind the ball.
Read more.Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Brazil win with a probability of 73.48%. A draw had a probability of 20.5% and a win for Ghana had a probability of 6.03%.
The most likely scoreline for a Brazil win was 1-0 with a probability of 21.96%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (19.38%) and 3-0 (11.4%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 0-0 (12.44%), while for a Ghana win it was 0-1 (3.97%). The actual scoreline of 3-0 was predicted with an 11.4% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Brazil would win this match.