Todays World Cup preview we are going to be looking at group E. This group contains Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland and Costa Rica. As mentioned previously this is all part of my series previewing the world cup so please go check the others out and let me know your thoughts. So lets first look at the age distributions of the 4 squads

First of all, I think this is the biggest differences between ages across a group we have seen so far. Brazil and Costa Rica have medians around late 20’s whereas Serbia and Switzerland both have medians around 25. Brazil seems to have a good cluster of players in the late 20’s age bracket which is peak age. Is everything aligning to make Brazil the strongest team in the competition? Costa Rica look to have the group around the same age all in their late thirties. Serbia has a squad towards the younger end of the scale with a lot of players between 20 -25.

The age profiles in all four squads are reflected in the caps distribution. Both Brazil and Costa Rica have players with at least 30 caps. It would be interesting to investigate if the number of caps a team has affected the chances of winning the World Cup. Serbia having the youngest squad of the group also have the most players with the low amount of caps. Switzerland has a fairly even spread across the cap levels.

All four teams seem to have similar squad compositions The only slight difference is Brazil has fewer midfielders at the expense of more attackers. Costa Rica looks to be relatively slim on the ground when it comes to attackers.

Lets now take a look at how each teams chances in the tournament compare. This has been done by working out the chance based on implied bookies odds.  Whats not surprising is Brazil has an excellent chance of getting through the group seen as though they are the actual favourites of the competition. Whats good to see if that it looks to be a close competition for second place in the group with both Serbia and Switzerland with around 50/50 chance. Will be good to see how close it is when the games are close.

That’s it for today’s preview please check the others out and let me know your thoughts. I’ll be back with the next one tomorrow.