Costa Rica’s surprise 1-0 win over Italy not only wiped out any chance of England making the knockout stages, but decimated the scoring in the TASC World Cup Prediction Competition.
With 22 punters predicting an Italian win and 3 going for a 1-1 draw, only 5 teams managed to pick up a single point in the first match of the day.
The Switzerland v France encounter in Salvador provided the 10th game to date where no correct score was predicted. Despite 18 people predicting a French win and 6 the draw, only one team (One Over The Eight), picked up two points.
Ecuador’s bruising encounter with Honduras saw them come from a goal down to triumph 2-1. Whilst 9 of our entrants predicted a win for Ecuador only one, George Heslop’s Souper Doopers’ picked up an all correct 3 points.
It was a poor scoring day all round with Timperley Toon finishing pointless on the day. The top points scorers were the Souper Doopers and Sarah Rowley who each picked up 4 points. As a result Sarah extends her lead at the top of the table to 4 points from Potters Mould and Rio De Timperley.
1 Sarah Rowley 36
2 Potters Mould 32
3 Rio De Timperley 32
4 Groucho's Gooners 31
5 Gilmore 31
6 Shortdean United 31
7 The Flaggers 30
8 Good Guessers 29
9 The Hand of God 29
10 Mauritian Flyer 29
11 GC XI 27
12 Barkley's Brave Harts 27
13 Pukka Is Best 26
14 Phil Jones 25
15 One Over The Eight 24
16 Foz 24
17 Super Doopers 24
18 Hardly Athletic 23
19 I'll Beat George 23
20 Wilmslow Wanderers 22
21 Timperley Toon 20
22 They Think It's All Over 20
23 Pete Foster 20
24 We're On The First Plane Home 20
25 All Roads To Rio - BR - 116 19
Saturday Preview:
After Iran’s no score draw in their opening match against Nigeria, it’s almost unanimously predicted that they will fail to score in their match against Argentina. Only 2 punters expect Iran to score, and 24 out of our 25 entries predict a win for Argentina. We have 7 predictions for 3-0 and 4-0 each and 5 have gone for 5-0. Oh ! and Pete Foster has gone for 1-1 (again !)
The second match between Germany and Ghana is almost another racing certainty in the eyes of our experts with 22 people expecting a German victory. Most expected winning margin is 2-0 with 10 predictions. 3 people have gone for a draw including Pete Foster.
A draw is the favoured outcome of the final match between Nigeria and Bosnia Herzegovina with 11 predictions (7 for 1-1 and 4 for 2-2) At least 6 others agree with Pete Foster on this one !