Despite being bereft of any household names, Kazakhstan have thrown down the gauntlet to many of their continental foes in recent months and will receive a timely boost with the return of leading scorer Zaynutdinov.
Thursday's game should not be a totally comfortable affair for Greece, whose defence is unlikely to emerge unscathed, but we still expect Poyet's men to march on to next week's playoff final.
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Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Greece win with a probability of 72.66%. A draw had a probability of 17.7% and a win for Kazakhstan had a probability of 9.61%.
The most likely scoreline for a Greece win was 2-0 with a probability of 14.08%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-0 (12.93%) and 3-0 (10.22%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (8.35%), while for a Kazakhstan win it was 0-1 (3.84%). The actual scoreline of 5-0 was predicted with a 2.4% likelihood. Our team at Sports Mole and our data analysis both correctly predicted that Greece would win this match.
0.72) 
-0.32) 
