The Real Madrid captain has been awarded a combined 50.78 goals in the last three La Liga seasons by the xG (expected goals) metric, which assesses quality of the scoring opportunities created. He even exceeded the data requirements and scored 55 goals.

During the same period, he bagged a further 20 goals at 15.43 xG in the Champions League. A sufficient sample of data and long-term xG overtaking shows that Benzema not only gets into good positions regularly, but is also an excellent finisher.

After announcing France's final squad, Deschamps hinted that the reigning world champions will return to a back-four formation in Qatar, most likely the 4-2-3-1 that Les Bleus dominated with in 2018. And it is believed that Benzema will be replaced by Olivier Giroud; a player who many claim is the best substitute in the tournament. And the data does not refute this idea.

After joining AC Milan, Giroud has made 42 Serie A appearances (a total of 2,836 minutes) in the last two seasons, scoring 16 times. He regularly gets shots centrally - only Victor Osimhen from Napoli and Edin Džeko from Inter create more dangerous opportunities. In addition, Giroud is one of the most defensively beneficial forwards in the world.

He reclaims possession a lot during the match, is effective in pressing and, on top of that, excellent in the air - in all these aspects, he is among the best strikers in Serie A. In the current season, Giroud is even the best in the air in his position. In the top five players with the highest success percentage, he is ahead of Abraham, Beto, Osimhen and Vlahovič.

Tchouaméni as one of France's driving forces

Another topic that is often talked about is that France arrived in Qatar with the fifth youngest squad, which is mainly reflected in midfield. While, for example, Giroud and Griezmann have collected 224 starts for France, Eduardo Camavinga has only four. Aurélien Tchouaméni has managed 14 so far. The most experienced central midfielder is ​​therefore Adrien Rabiot with 29 starts. In the end, it all depends on the player's abilities, and we can describe them very precisely with the data.

Tchouaméni played the 21/22 season in Monaco with an overview that is seen only a few times in a decade from such a young player. At the age of 21, he became clearly the best defensive midfielder in Ligue 1. No other player in his position stopped so many dangerous chances, no other player intercepted and blocked such a high number of passes, and no other player had such a high success rate in headers. He won 70% of his duels in the air and won the ball 76% of the time on the ground.

He was a huge asset to his team in the passing game too. One of our most complex models is the so-called goal probability added (GPA+), or added value per goal; this model tracks all of a player's touches with the ball and measures how much they increase their team's chance of scoring a goal. We can monitor GPA+ for passing and dribbling at the same time, divide it into both activities separately or map how the player performs in these activities in specific thirds of the pitch.

Among the six players who played at least 1,000 minutes in the 21/22 Ligue 1 season, only Bruno Guimarães, now a player at Newcastle in England, was more beneficial to his team in terms of dangerous passes and runs. Mathematically, the most valuable type of pass at that time was the diagonal from the intermediate space. That is the pass Kylian Mbappé will be looking for at the World Cup... Tchouaméni has not yet played enough minutes at Real Madrid for an accurate analysis.

Defence wins titles

At last year's Euros, Denmark reached the semi-finals. They subsequently won 11 out of a total of 15 games played, dominated qualification for the World Cup in Qatar with a score of 30:3 and finished second behind Croatia in their Nations League group.

Progressing from a group with France, Australia and Tunisia doesn't seem like much of a problem on paper, but the prospect of facing Argentina, the Netherlands or Brazil in the knockout stages will require you to put your best defensive skills to the test. This is one of the highlights the Dane's current squad and one of the reasons why they got so far at the last major tournament.

After the end of the Euros, the Danes continued to qualify for the World Cup and allowed only 0.61 xG per match to their opponents in the remaining seven clashes. However, their last qualifying match against Scotland and the subsequent two Nations League matches against France and Austria were not so dominant at the back.

Denmark - uncharacteristically - allowed a total of 26 shots from inside the box and an average of 2.2 xG per game, showing just how dangerous those chances were. Denmark won two of these matches, and in the match against Scotland, instead of the traditional pairing of Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Thomas Delaney, Daniel Wass and Jens Jonsson got a chance in the midfield, but they can't afford to drop the ball in Qatar.

In the final four matches of the Nations League, it was once again a more typical Denmark, who do not allow opponents many chances - but even that might not be enough against the best teams in the world. In short, some shots will still go between the posts and Kasper Schmeichel is not yet performing as reliably in Nice as he did for Leicester.

According to our models, Schmeichel has conceded the same number of goals as if the average Ligue 1 goalkeeper stood in his place. He is also around the league average in the vast majority of goalkeeper models evaluating the quality of catching. Coach Kasper Hjulmand has the excellent catcher and passer Frederik Rønnow from Union Berlin with him, but Schmeichel is still the clear number one choice.