Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

As the World Cup heads towards the conclusion of its second week, we’ve started to notice something.

FIFA’s vibes are definitely off.

But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, here’s what’s ahead today

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• What’s up with FIFA’s vibes? 🤔

• Today’s complete match schedule. 🗓️

• Our top pick of the day. ✅

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🇨🇭 Switzerland vs. Canada 🇨🇦

• Group: Group B

• Time: 15:00 ET

• Venue: BC Place

• Location: Vancouver, British Columbia

🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina vs. Qatar 🇶🇦

• Group: Group B

• Time: 15:00 ET

• Venue: Lumen Field

• Location: Seattle

🏴 Scotland vs. Brazil 🇧🇷

• Group: Group C

• Time: 18:00 ET

• Venue: Hard Rock Stadium

• Location: Miami Gardens

🇲🇦 Morocco vs. Haiti 🇭🇹

• Group: Group C

• Time: 18:00 ET

• Venue: Mercedes-Benz Stadium

• Location: Atlanta

🇨🇿 Czechia vs. Mexico 🇲🇽

• Group: Group A

• Time: 21:00 ET

• Venue: Estadio Azteca

• Location: Mexico City

🇿🇦 South Africa vs. South Korea 🇰🇷

• Group: Group A

• Time: 21:00 ET

• Venue: Estadio BBVA

• Location: Monterrey, Mexico

Want to get the best odds on today’s matches?

After writing about Ronaldo yesterday, we were on the verge of doing the logical follow up today — a nice little article about why late-stage career Messi is better.

To support that argument, we were going to start with this little gem — the “FIFA Power Rankings powered by Aramco” — which apparently “provides objective, data driven insight into player performance.” (No surprises here, but Messi is currently ranked #2 while Ronaldo’s nowhere to be seen.)

But then we noticed something weird — FIFA seems to be saying one thing while doing another.

Of course, this shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone by now. We all know FIFA’s got a habit of saying one thing while the reality on the ground says another. But this one seemed… well, a bit more clean-cut than the usual nitpicking over details/interpretations of things like hydration breaks.

To show what we mean here, let’s start by looking at FIFA more broadly.

Ahead of this year’s World Cup, FIFA talked a big game around what the corporate world likes to call “Environmental, Social and Governance” (ESG). You know, all the usual stuff about “carbon footprints”, “circular economy”, “human rights”, etc., etc. You can read all about it in the FIFA World Cup Sustainability & Human Rights Strategy if you really want the details.

Now, for those of you who’ve been paying attention, maybe you see where this is going. But, for the rest of you, let’s go back to the so-called Power Rankings that set us off down this path. In particular, the sponsor — Aramco.

As you might have guessed by the liberal use of the word “power” here — Power Rankings powered by… — Aramco is, indeed, an energy company. Specifically, to quote Wikipedia, a “majority state-owned petroleum and natural gas company.”

What’s interesting about this?

Well, let’s start with one of FIFA’s stated goals for this year’s World Cup — “to reduce environmental impacts, deliver best-practice solutions and raise climate awareness.”

And now let’s quote Wikipedia one more time: “In 2024, Saudi Aramco was responsible for more CO2 emissions than any other entity, being responsible for 1,653 Mt CO2 emissions, or 4.28% of global CO2 emissions.”

To put that into perspective, that’s more than ExxonMobil (677 Mt CO2), Chevron (577 Mt CO2), and Shell (426 Mt CO2) combined. And yet, FIFA chose to partner up with Aramco as a major partner at this year’s event — an event at which FIFA claims it wants to “raise climate awareness.”

Now, don’t get us wrong here. We’re not here to take sides in the whole climate awareness debate — that’s for another time and another place. But we are here to talk about anything and everything related to this year’s World Cup, of which FIFA’s many contradictions are unfortunately a part of.

And speaking of contradictions, there’s plenty more where that “FIFA says “we’re promoting climate awareness” while partnering with the company at the source of 4.27% of global emissions” thing came from.

To get to the next contradiction, we need to pull in one more fact — Aramco is majority (98%) state-owned by the Saudi Arabia Government and Public Investment Fund. And, as many of you may already know, Saudi Arabia doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to things like civil liberties, political rights, freedom of the press, and other basic human rights.

And, yeah, as you’re probably guessing by now, FIFA’s also been talking a big game about all that stuff as part of its broad ESG push around this year’s World Cup, even going so far as to publish a detailed “Human Rights Framework” for the event.

Now, again, we’re not here to debate the individual issues at stake here. There’s a better time and place for that.

All of this is simply to ask a question: is this yet another instance of FIFA saying one thing — “we’re raising climate awareness and leaving positive social legacies” — while the reality is something else?

In any case, it could be interesting to see whether FIFA, its partners, and host nations manage to bring their general vibes more into line as we look ahead towards 2034.

⚽ Scotland vs Brazil
🏟️ 2026 FIFA World Cup
📅 Thursday 25 June; 00:00 (Europe/Paris)

• Why we’re watching: Scotland’s trying to reach the knockout stages for the first time ever. Brazil’s trying to win the group stage. Brazil probably needs to win this to achieve its goal. Scotland probably needs any other result to achieve its goal.

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Brazil is currently #5 in the FIFA rankings.

  • Scotland is currently #41 in the FIFA rankings.

  • The head-to-head history heavily favors Brazil (4W/1D/0L). However, it’s ancient history — the last head-to-head was in 2011.

• CXSports says: The gap in FIFA rankings here looks like they already say all there is to say about this game. With a full 36 places separating these two, it would seem this one shouldn’t even be close. And even if the direct head-to-head history is ancient history by now, the fact that this Scotland’s hopes of qualifying for its first-ever World Cup knockout stage (while merely qualifying for it is more or less assumed for Brazil) speaks volumes.
  
  However, FIFA rankings and other historical tidbits are lagging indicators. What’s perhaps more relevant here is the fact that Brazil arrives at this World Cup after putting up their worst-ever qualifying campaign in history with a 5th-placed finish in CONMEBOL with 28 points from 18 games. So we’re clearly not dealing with the “vintage” Brazilian machine here. Then, there’s also the whole squad fitness thing — Neymar might make his first appearance in this game after only very recently returning to tactical work, while Raphinha is out for at least this match.
  
  Scotland, on the other hand, are looking slightly stronger than usual. The obvious case in point here is their 1-0 victory against Haiti, although that’s not exactly impressive given the skill gap. What is more impressive, however, is the fact they limited the damage Morocco could inflict enough to keep that game to a respectable (considering the relative rankings here) 0-1 loss.
  
  Of course, the big issue in both of Scotland’s games so far is their attacking ceiling, which seems kinda low at exactly 0.5 goals scored per game. Although, with that said, they did put in a couple of big 4-goal-game performances (vs Curacao and Bolivia) in their international friendly campaign leading into this year’s World Cup. So they can score goals given the right opponents. And the right opponents part is key here — that same international friendly run also saw them go goalless in their game against Ivory Coast.
  
  Brazil, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care who its opponent is — it’s scored at least one goal in each of its last 10 games (and is undefeated in 5). And while it’s defense isn’t exactly air tight, the fact it limited concessions to just 11 goals over those 10 games while scoring 26 in response suggests they’re certainly up to the task of defending against Scotland’s “it depends” offense.
  
  With all of that said, there’s still a chance this won’t be a clean thrashing for the Scottish team. If they manage to focus the adrenaline they’ll no doubt feel running into this game (first World Cup knockout stage on the line) into on-field performance, there’s a good chance they might do better than they ‘should’. They’ve already shown this against Morocco — a similarly-ranked team to Brazil — so we don’t see why they won’t do it again here.
  
  Sure, it might not be enough for the Scottish to actually stand a chance at winning — this game’s still Brazil’s for the taking — but it might be enough to at least make this one very interesting game to watch.

• Score prediction: 2-0 for Brazil

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Brazil Victory

• Odds Range: 1.23-1.46

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (No)

• Odds Range: 1.45-1.67

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s a wrap for today. Tomorrow, we’ll be back with a massive day ahead of us with a full 6 games scheduled: Curaçao vs. Ivory Coast, Ecuador vs. Germany, Japan vs. Sweden, Tunisia vs. Netherlands, Türkiye vs. USA, and Paraguay vs. Australia.

Until then, go forth and make the most of today’s World Cup action. 

(And bonus points if you can do it while keeping your words and actions more consistent than FIFA’s 😉)