France carry Nichola from wild card to favourite; Tega bows out

The quarter-finals opened with the very match the form guide called the hinge, and it swung hard. Nichola’s France beat Tega’s Morocco 2-0 to reach the semi-finals - a +20 that carries Nichola to 72 and third, and does something none of us saw coming a week ago: it makes her the outright favourite.

Remember where Nichola started this week - seventh on the table, owning the tournament favourite but with barely anything banked, her range running comically from first to last. One clean win has collapsed all that uncertainty upward. France are into the last four, they’re the model’s most likely champion, and the wild card is suddenly the one to beat.

Spare a thought, then, for Tega. Morocco were her sixth and final team, and with them go the last of her hopes: like Sophie and Emily before her, she now has no teams left, stranded on 49. Her whole week rode on this one result - the escape hatch the form guide flagged - and it shut. She bows out bottom, but with a Morocco run (last 32, last 16, quarter-final) that carried her a lot further than a tier-seven side had any right to.

That result also quietly settles the foot of the table for good: with Emily, Sophie and Tega all now out of teams, the bottom three are fixed - Emily 6th, Sophie 7th, Tega 8th - no matter what happens above them.

The table: Richard 101, Pete 76, Nichola 72, Ella 67, Henry 63, Emily 55, Sophie 53, Tega 49. Today the quarters roll on with a marquee tie: Ella’s Spain v Pete’s Belgium.

Odds watch

A new name at the top. France securing a semi-final - and sitting as the most likely champion (30.4%) - vaults Nichola to favourite at ~3.28 (30.4%), nudging ahead of Ella ~3.56 (28.1%) and Richard ~3.90 (25.6%). It’s still a tight three-way inside six points, but the order at the top has flipped. The lovely divergence sharpens with it: Richard leads the points table by twenty-five and the projected finish, yet is now only the third favourite - because the market prices who lifts the cup, and both France and Spain are rated likelier winners than his Argentina. Behind the top three, Henry (~9.0) holds fourth, Pete (~21) is the last live outsider with two teams still standing, and the bottom three have drifted off the board entirely. The next twist waits on Spain v Belgium - Ella’s chance to answer Nichola, and Pete’s to gatecrash.