AFCON '23 - Quarterfinals

Sup y'all-

This AFCON has been OFF.  THE.  CHAIN. I'm sure y'all have seen the talking point that there are literally 8 completely different nations comprising this Quarterfinal Round than there were in the 2021 version.  That's an unprecedented changing of the guard in a short time in one confederation.  On average there have been 22.9 elo points exchanged per game in this year's AFCON, up from 17.7 in the 2021 AFCON (a significant increase in level-of-upset).

**for the uninitiated, the bigger a surprise a result is, the more elo points are exchanged by the teams.

Even though there is a changing of the guard in Africa, it seems to be a big shift toward bigger and richer countries as compared to 2 (ish) years ago:

population and GDP of countries in the quarterfinals of AFCON

Or, sort of a return to the norm, with 2021 being the pretty big outlier for success of smaller countries.

Of the original 8 highest favored countries at the beginning of the tournament (most of whom were well over 50% likely to make quarters THAT'S RIGHT I POST MY L'S), only 2 countries remain!! Mali and the Ivory Coast.  Wild.  At this rate I assume we are headed for a Angola - Guinea finals matchup (2.5% chance to happen, lowest of all possible matchups).

As always, follow @dopeisland23 on twitter for matchday forecasts.

Model Overview

Bracket (Current & Projected)

Circle Chart (Patent Pending)

Can't wait to see what this next round has in store!!

dopeisland