2018 FIFA World Cup - Predicting the Winners of Each Round of 16 Match
The Group Stages of the 2018 FIFA World Cup are now done and dusted, and it was a phenomenal 2 weeks of the biggest Football event of the year. For the 3rd consecutive edition, the group stages featured the biggest upset as the defending champions failed to progress into the knock out rounds, with Germany losing to South Korea and Mexico in two of their three group matches.
The premature exit of Germany was not the only shocker from the Group matches, as underrated teams like Mexico, Russia and Japan qualified for the knockout stage at the expense of other prominent teams like Peru and Poland while Argentina managed to get past an early exit scare to make it to the knockouts.
With 8 matches scheduled over 4 days starting from Tomorrow, the World Cup now enters its 2nd stage that will end with only 8 teams having a chance to fight for the title. Here are the predictions for the winner of each of the 8 Round of 16 matches:
Uruguay vs Portugal
Along with the next match on this list, this showdown between two heavyweights is generating a lot of buzz among the football fraternity. Not only will it feature the clash between two of the best forwards in Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo, it will be the first-ever clash between these two teams.
After starting strongly by keeping Spain to a draw and then convincingly defeating Morocco, Portugal barely managed to make it to the knockouts after a late scare by Iran in their last group match. Portugal have been over-dependent on Ronaldo so far, who has scored 4 out of the 5 goals for the team.
Uruguay, on the other hand, ended the group stage by winning all the three matches and finishing at the top of the table. The team has performed well in all the departments, scoring 5 goals and not even conceding a single goal in 3 matches. Despite a strong challenge from the Portugal squad, we can surely see Uruguay end Portugal's quest for their first World Cup.
Prediction: Uruguay wins