We said: Iran 2-0 Nicaragua
Even without some of their key players - such as Porto's Mehdi Taremi - at their disposal, we expect Iran to have far too much ability and motivation for their opponents on Thursday.
Nicaragua are 122 places lower than Iran in FIFA's World Rankings, suggesting that they should be content with a narrow defeat in Tehran.
Read more.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 Iran win with a probability of 58.52%. A draw had a probability of 23.2% and a win for Nicaragua had a probability of 18.32%.
The most likely scoreline for a Iran win was 1-0 with a probability of 12.54%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 2-0 (11.1%) and 2-1 (9.74%). The likeliest drawn scoreline was 1-1 (10.99%), while for a Nicaragua win it was 0-1 (6.21%). The actual scoreline of 1-0 was predicted with a 12.5% likelihood. Our data analysis correctly predicted a 1-0 win for Iran in this match and our team at Sports Mole correctly predicted the win for Iran.
0.12) 
-0.02) 
