Spain 0-0 Cape Verde Islands: FIFA World Cup Match Report
Final Score
Spain
0 — 0
Cape Verde Islands
Key Moments
Half-time: Spain 0-0 Cape Verde Islands
Final score: Spain 0-0 Cape Verde Islands
Post-Match Analysis
Match Summary
The eventual world champions opened their tournament without a goal. Spain 0-0 Cape Verde Islands was goalless at the interval and goalless at the end, and it is the only match in Group H that Spain did not win.
Read forward and it looks like an anomaly. Spain beat Saudi Arabia 4-0, beat Uruguay 1-0, won the group with seven points and a 5:0 record, and then went through the knockout rounds conceding a single goal in total before lifting the trophy. Read the group in isolation and the draw is the more interesting result, because it is the one that shaped the qualification race behind them.
Cape Verde's contribution here was a clean sheet against the strongest side in the tournament, and clean sheets turned out to be their method. They drew 0-0 with Spain, drew 2-2 with Uruguay and drew 0-0 with Saudi Arabia, finishing the group stage having conceded two goals in three matches and scored two. No wins, no defeats, and a place in the Round of 32. This match was the first instalment and the one that established the pattern.
What It Settled
Two dropped points cost Spain nothing. Seven points won Group H comfortably and they were never seriously threatened at the top of it. What the result did was set the floor under Cape Verde's campaign at a moment when nobody would have priced them for it.
Group H finished with Spain on seven, Cape Verde second on three, Saudi Arabia third on two and Uruguay bottom on two. One point separated qualification from elimination for three teams, and Cape Verde's point in this match was the first of the three they collected. It carried them into a Round of 32 tie against Argentina — reached, remarkably, without winning a match at the tournament.
Prediction Review
Our pre-match call was Double Chance 1X (Spain or Draw) at 1.42. It won, on the half of the bet we were not really buying. At that price the market is telling you that the favourite's win is doing almost all of the work, and it did none of it. The read that would have been genuinely useful here was not that Spain were strong but that Cape Verde were hard to score against, and nothing in our pre-match case identified that. A winning ticket on the wrong reasoning is still a winning ticket, but it is worth naming the difference. Verdict: won