Itoje England’s youngest second row for 20 years

RUGBY – Maro Itoje has been named in England’s starting XV to face Ireland in the third round of the Six Nations Championship at Twickenham on Saturday. Itoje will be the youngest second row to start for England in the competition since Garath Archer 20 years ago, and only the eighth forward in the professional era to debut for England before his 22^nd birthday.

ANALYSE THIS: USA, Germany, Japan & Canada expected in last four

FOOTBALL – The FIFA World rankings for women’s football have provided a good basis for our forecast so far with seven of our eight favourites in the second round progressing through to the quarter-finals. In addition, our pre-tournament forecast correctly predicted six of the eight quarter-finalists, and two of the exact match-ups (France v Germany and England v Canada) in this round. Our updated forecast for the quarter-final matches expects the United States to play Germany and Japan to play Canada in the last four. These exact semi-final pairings were also predicted in our pre-tournament forecast.

ANALYSE THIS: Germany slight favourites at FIFA Women’s World Cup

FOOTBALL – Germany are the favourites for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, but only just, according to a new analysis from Infostrada Sports. The United States are second favourites and there is nearly 50% chance of the winners being one or the other of these two teams. They are, however, most likely to meet each other at the semi-final stage of the competition.

REVIEW: English exodus in Europe greatest in 22 years

FOOTBALL –  Everton’s elimination by Dynamo Kyiv means that thee are no English teams left in Europe this season.  For the first time in 22 years, there will not be a single English club in the quarterfinals of the various European cup competitions. Ever since 1992/93, England have always sent at least one representative to the last eight in Europe. The seven English sides that embarked on their European adventure this season were Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Everton, Tottenham Hotspur and Hull City.

ANALYSE THIS: A Clean Sheet vs 1 Goal

FOOTBALL – Former Scottish football player Paul Dalglish made a statement on twitter claiming a clean sheet earns more points than a single goal. Based on this tweet, our colleague at Infostrada Sports, Murray Innes, has written an article on the importance of a clean sheet in the English top flight.

FIVE FAST FACTS: Six Nations – Wales v England

RUGBY UNION – The 2015 Six Nations Championship will get underway this Friday, February 6. We have lined up Five Fast Facts for the opener between Wales and England.

ANALYSE THIS: More Swedes than English in Champions League

FOOTBALL – Players from 64 different countries played in this week’s Champions League with their time on the pitch ranging from 4019 minutes by the 55 Brazilians appearing for 20 different clubs in the competition to a five minute appearance for Ludogorets by Tunisian Hamza Younes. England has the maximum number of clubs in the competition but English players were only 11^th in terms of playing time, lagging behind smaller nations such as Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.

ANALYSE THIS: Germany lose number one spot, Dutch in freefall

FOOTBALL – Now that the dust has settled on the week’s international matches in Europe, a glance at the Infostrada Sports’ National Team Ranking reveals a few major changes since the World Cup  including Germany’s loss of the top spot to Argentina after losing at home to their World Cup final opponents and the Dutch national team dropping from third to ninth after two defeats. There is now just one European team, Germany, in the top five as Spain have dropped a place.

ANALYSE THIS: Croatia Group H favourites ahead of Italy

FOOTBALL: Euro 2016 qualification begins this weekend and two of the top seeded teams in the draw, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy, are not the favourites to win their groups according to the Infostrada Sports’ National Team Ranking. Six of the nine groups have an overwhelming favourite to be group winner and only one of the groups looks truly competitive at this stage. We finish our analysis of the groups by looking at E to I. Our previous article analysing Groups A to D can be read here: http://infostradalive.com/2014/09/03/analyse-this-overwhelming-favourites-in-groups-a-to-d/

ANALYSE THIS: The ‘Copa de Zebra’ revisited

FOOTBALL – As we reported earlier this week, the 2014 World Cup has been termed the ‘Copa de Zebra’ in Brazil where zebra refers to results being unexpected. Although six of the 16 teams who have progressed to the second round could be termed surprising, there have actually been very few surprise results in Brazil and 14 of the 16 survivors had at least around 40% chance of reaching this stage. The only truly surprising teams in the second round are Algeria and Costa Rica.