Croatia Petar Sucic 31′, Nikola Vlasic 83′ · Ghana Derrick Luckassen 73′
Lincoln Financial Field · 68,324 attendance
The story
The favourite delivered: Croatia (55% pre-match) beat Ghana 2–1. The xG race tells a different story though: Ghana created more (1.27 vs 1.23) and will feel hard done by.
Expected goals race
CroatiaGhana● goal
Cumulative expected goals, minute by minute. ESPN's free feed has no xG, so each shot's xG is estimated with a naive distance-and-angle logistic model fitted on shot coordinates from the play-by-play.
Pre-match Elo: Croatia 1916, Ghana 1791. The model priced this Croatia 55% / draw 23% / Ghana 22%, most likely score 1–1. The model called it. The result moves 16 Elo points from Ghana to Croatia — that flows straight into the next round of tournament simulations.
Timeline
31'GOALGoal! Croatia 1, Ghana 0. Petar Sucic (Croatia) right footed shot from outside the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Mateo Kovacic.
45'SUBSubstitution, Ghana. Kojo Peprah Oppong replaces Jonas Adjetey.
45'SUBSubstitution, Ghana. Abdul Fatawu replaces Elisha Owusu.
66'SUBSubstitution, Croatia. Igor Matanovic replaces Ante Budimir.
68'YELLOWIvan Perisic (Croatia) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
71'SUBSubstitution, Ghana. Brandon Thomas-Asante replaces Jordan Ayew.
71'SUBSubstitution, Ghana. Ernest Nuamah replaces Kamaldeen Sulemana.
73'GOALGoal! Croatia 1, Ghana 1. Derrick Luckassen (Ghana) left footed shot from very close range to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Ernest Nuamah with a cross following a set piece situation.Goal awarded following VAR Review.
78'SUBSubstitution, Croatia. Mario Pasalic replaces Mateo Kovacic.
83'GOALGoal! Croatia 2, Ghana 1. Nikola Vlasic (Croatia) header from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Luka Modric with a cross following a corner.