Chris Sutton's World Cup Quarter-Final Predictions

In the World Cup 2026 quarter-finals, four teams would head home while four remained to fight for a spot in the semi-finals. BBC Sport football expert Chris Sutton predicted outcomes for the matchups after previously achieving a good success rate in the Round of 16 predictions, with only Switzerland's penalty shootout win over Colombia surprising him. Meanwhile, AI struggled with its predictions, wrongly forecasting Brazil's defeat by Norway and the USA's elimination by Belgium. The users of the BBC's predictor game did slightly better, achieving 6 out of 8 correct results and leading overall scores with 68 correct predictions (71%). Chris and AI both forecasted the results correctly 61 times, which is 64% accuracy for both.

As for the quarter-finals, England faced Norway and France competed against Morocco. AI's predictions for the quarter-finals were generated using Microsoft Copilot Chat, as it was asked to predict results for the matches. The BBC predictor game permitted readers to choose winners from each knockout tie.

Quarter-Final Matches

Thursday, 9 July
France v Morocco
Location: Boston / 21:00 BST
Sutton predicted a victory for France, asserting that they had shown character and quality, especially in their prior match against Paraguay. He noted Morocco's struggle in their previous game against Canada, calling attention to key forward Ismael Saibari's injury and predicting that France would win by 2-1.

Friday, 10 July
Spain v Belgium
Location: Los Angeles / 20:00 BST
Sutton felt Spain had been lacking in their attack against Portugal and despite Belgium's previous victory, he believed Spain would dominate the match. His prediction for the match was a 3-0 win for Spain.

Saturday, 11 July
Norway v England
Location: Miami / 22:00 BST
After England's impressive win over Mexico, Sutton expected a closely contested match against Norway, appreciating their star players and previous match performance. However, he predicted England would win 3-2.

Sunday, 12 July
Argentina v Switzerland
Location: Kansas City / 02:00 BST
Sutton expressed doubts about Argentina's prospects but ultimately believed Lionel Messi would lead his team to victory, predicting a 2-1 win against Switzerland, acknowledging their solid defense.