Croatia vs Ghana

Group L arrives at its final round with three of its four teams still able to finish first and all four of them still able to finish third. England lead on four points after beating Croatia 4-2 on 17 June and drawing 0-0 with Ghana on 23 June. Ghana also have four, from a 1-0 win over Panama on 17 June and that goalless draw. Croatia have three, having lost to England and then beat Panama 1-0 on 23 June. Panama have none.

The arithmetic for the two sides in this fixture runs as follows. A win puts Croatia on six points, which cannot be beaten to a top-two place by more than one other team, so it guarantees them the round of 32. A draw leaves them on four, most likely third, and third is not a bad place to be at this World Cup: 32 of the 48 teams go through, and eight of the twelve third-placed sides are among them. Four points and a goal difference around level would sit comfortably inside that eight on most readings. Defeat leaves Croatia on three with a negative difference, which is the sort of third place that finishes on the wrong side of the cut.

Ghana's position is simpler. A point guarantees them a top-two finish, because five points cannot be matched by more than one of the other three. That matters for this preview more than it matters for Ghana: a side that needs a draw and knows it changes the shape of a football match.

Our records contain no previous meeting between these two nations, so there is no head-to-head to lean on and we will not invent a pattern from nothing.

Croatia's tournament has been a game of two halves in the literal sense. They were level 2-2 with England at the interval before losing 4-2, then beat Panama 1-0, the only goal arriving after a goalless first half. Three scored, four conceded, and a record that says they can hurt good opponents and can also be picked apart by them.

Their Euro 2024 was thinner. Croatia lost 3-0 to Spain on 15 June 2024, drew 2-2 with Albania on 19 June and 1-1 with Italy on 24 June, and appear nowhere in the knockout rounds of that tournament. Two draws from three, one of them from a losing position at half-time against Albania, and a heavy defeat to the eventual winners. It is a record of a side that competes without controlling.

Ghana have the most distinctive numbers in the group and the smallest ones: one goal scored, none conceded, four points. The win over Panama came from a goalless first half, and the England match never produced a goal at either end. Ghana were not at Euro 2024, so there is no prior tournament form on them at all — 180 minutes is the whole file, and 180 minutes of low-scoring football is not a large enough sample to call a defensive team a defensive team with any confidence.

The clearest factor is the low-scoring profile of everything Ghana have been involved in. Two matches, one goal, and that goal decided a match. If this fixture follows the same pattern, the range of scorelines narrows sharply, and a narrow range of scorelines is where a double chance earns its keep.

Second, both matches in the group kick off at the same time. Neither Croatia nor Ghana will have any idea what Panama are doing against England while they play, so neither can adjust to a scoreline they cannot see. In a group this tight — one point covering three teams — that removes the option of settling for a known-safe result late on.

Third, a draw is genuinely useful to both. It sends Ghana through and keeps Croatia in the third-place conversation with four points. Fixtures where the shared outcome suits both parties do not always produce cautious football, but they rarely produce a side chasing recklessly from behind.

Fourth, Croatia have already shown they can win a must-win match at this tournament, having faced Panama needing points after the England defeat and taken all three.

Fifth, and to be explicit about it: the fixture list names Croatia as the home side, which at a World Cup means the sequence of the two names and nothing more. We attach no advantage to it.

The argument for the selection is a combination of Croatia's greater need, Ghana's minimal attacking output so far, and the fact that a draw is an acceptable outcome to both dressing rooms. Ghana have scored once in the tournament; asking them to beat a side that has to win, in a match where a point already does their job, is asking for the least likely of the three results on the current evidence.

Double chance is also the market our own numbers back most consistently — a 69.4% strike rate, and one of only two of the five we publish in that has made money across 374 settled picks. On a fixture this tight, taking two of the three outcomes is a better use of the evidence than picking between them.

We are backing Double Chance 1X (Croatia or Draw) with medium confidence rather than high, because Croatia's defence has already conceded four in this group and Ghana have not conceded at all.

The thing that beats it: Ghana's one goal in two matches came from a set of circumstances we cannot see, and a side that has kept two clean sheets needs only to repeat the trick once more and find a single goal. If they do that, Croatia's need to chase turns a controlled match into an open one, and the selection loses on the only result it does not cover.