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I’ll have a go at predicting the whole round of 16:
Canada v Morocco 1–3
Paraguay v France 1–3
Brazil v Norway 1–2
Mexico v England 4–5 (I reckon this will go to a penalty shoot-out; lots of people think England will be knocked out here.)
Portugal v Spain 5–6 (also a penalty shoot-out; Portugal only have themselves to blame for not topping their group. For me, this is the most interesting match of the World Cup)
USA v Belgium 3–2 (I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time – home advantage)
Argentina v Egypt 2–1
Switzerland v Colombia 1–2 (Portugal have only themselves to blame – that would have been easier!) [...]

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I’ve already read plenty of reports on this, but the official FIFA website still shows the originally scheduled kick-off time. We’ll have to wait and see. Severe weather isn’t the main problem – it’s lightning – and if lightning strikes within an 8km radius, the match will be suspended.
Javier Aguirre is said to have been furious about the change of schedule because it throws the whole plan into disarray. It would be chaos for Tuchel too. One might also speculate whether FIFA wants to stage the match during European primetime. [...]

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As third in the group, it would certainly have been more comfortable to face neighbouring Switzerland, but third place was no longer an option going into the final match. We would have had to pick up a point against Argentina, then lose to Algeria to avoid facing Spain. [...]

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I had a successful day of betting yesterday, including a spot-on prediction for Portugal v Croatia.
So far, I’ve only watched the Austria match; there was nothing more to be had against Spain. Ralf Rangnick was also frustrated by the draw. [...]

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This is a common misconception, the only reason that the 200 million thing gets thrown around is that it's technically how much a team going up to the league gains from the single playoff game. This is because there's 100 million of TV money and 20 or so prize money and then a parachute TV payment given to them the following season so that they don't go broke after being relegated. Then you add the potential commercial deals you can sign and it adds up to roughly 150-200 million euros over the course of 2-3 seasons. They remove a bit of the risk of buying good players for clubs coming up because they can still have a season or so of keeping those players or at least being able to negotiate on their sales properly, this keeps the top league competitive in contrast with other leagues where t [...]

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Senegal only have themselves to blame for that; they threw the game away. As far as I’m concerned, Belgium are playing a largely uninspiring and disappointing brand of football and will be thrashed by one of the big teams. They might even be knocked out as early as their match against the USA. [...]

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