This year we have a World Cup full of controversy, especially because of the laws governing the country where it will be played: Qatar.
Laws that will not allow visitors to watch the World Cup matches to have public displays of affection or sexual relations with other people outside marriage. In the latter case, with prison sentences of up to 7 years.
However, what really matters to us about the World Cup is the soccer, not the controversy surrounding it.
As for the favorites to win the World Cup, we have some classics among the candidates: Brazil, France and England are the three main candidates to take the title of champion (at least according to the odds that bookmakers offer for each of the teams in the tournament winner’s market).
They are closely followed by Spain, with a slightly higher odds. The top 5 is completed by Argentina, followed by Germany and Portugal.
The surprise
Many soccer professionals believe that a team that could be a surprise contender and therefore fight for the title of world champion is Belgium, although for bookmakers it starts in a position quite far from the first ones, namely the eighth national team with the best chances of winning the title.
However, the explosiveness of some of its players, coupled with the fact that they have been playing together for several years in the national team (it is a team with a large majority of young players but who have been playing at the highest level for a long time), make it a candidate for a surprise for some professional analysts.
Other analysts believe that the candidate to surprise and win the title could be Portugal, with big stars and a great veteran presence of many of the players. Let’s remember that in Euro 2016, Portugal won the title without winning a single match in the 90 minutes until the final. This is one of the characteristics of such short tournaments, you do not need to give big surprises or win against difficult opponents, simply by not losing matches you can have your place in the final. And a match can be won by any of the teams that reach the final, so pulling off a surprise in this type of tournament is not as difficult as it may seem. You don’t need to beat rivals like Brazil or France, you simply need to be lucky in the crossings with the different teams and not lose until you reach the final. Even the final, you can win it without scoring any goal in regulation time.
Top scorers
As for the top scorers of the competition, it is difficult to predict since the fact of advancing one more round can make the difference in this regard. In fact, it is usual for the top scorer to belong to a team that has managed to reach at least the semifinals of the tournament, so that it has played more games than most teams in the championship. In any case, as top candidates to finish with the most goals scored we can find the two French stars: Karim Benzema and Kylian Mbappé.
