The group stage is done. The Netherlands finished first in their group and Morocco came through in second behind Brazil. Now it gets serious — one game, no second chances. AI Agent Johan enters the knockout stage and he has his prediction ready.
This blog post covers three things:
- what I had to do before Johan could predict this match
- what Johan actually predicts for this match
- my personal take
The stakes just changed
Group stage predictions are fun, but this is different. One loss and the Netherlands go home. Every variable in Johan’s model still matters, form, rankings, goals scored and conceded, but the tournament stage input shifts from Group Stage to R32 (Round of 32). That context is baked into the model, so Johan knows this is not a warm-up.
Morocco are no pushover either. They finished second in their group behind Brazil, which means they have been tested. Their Africa Cup performances in recent years show a team that is organised, defensively solid, and capable of upsetting bigger nations. This is genuinely the first tough test of the tournament for the Netherlands.
What needed to be updated before Johan could go live
As with every prediction, the model pulls its inputs from the Dataverse Teams table — not the training data. Before running the prediction I updated the form stats for both teams based on everything that happened in the group stage.
Before running the prediction, I manually updated the following data for both teams:
- Goals scored last 5 — updated to include the three group stage matches
- Goals conceded last 5 — same
- Win streak — current streak heading into the knockout round
- FIFA ranking — latest official FIFA ranking used to calculate the ranking difference (FIFA ranking)
Morocco — what the data says
Before asking Johan, here is what the raw numbers look like for both teams heading into this game:
| Morocco | |
| FIFA ranking | 6 |
| Goals scored last 5 | 2.2 |
| Goals conceded last | 0.8 |
| Win streak | 2 |
| Netherlands | |
| FIFA ranking | 7 |
| Goals scored last 5 | 2.4 |
| Goals conceded last 5 | 1.2 |
| Win streak | 2 |
On paper this game will be super close since all the numbers are also really close to eachother. Knowing that FIFA ranking difference is one of the key influential data columns and they are listed next to eachother on the FIFA Ranking it almost can’t be closer to eachter other.
What AI Agent Johan 🤖 predicts
I opened Copilot Studio, checked with Johan to predict Netherlands ,entered Morocco as the opponent and selected R32 as the tournament stage. Johan went to work.
My take
This is where it gets real. The Netherlands have been solid in the group stage but Morocco will press high and make it uncomfortable — they are not Japan or Tunisia. Johan’s model accounts for form and rankings but does not feel the nerves of a knockout game.
Personally I back the Netherlands to get through, but I would not be surprised if it goes to extra time. My gut says narrow win.
Blog Series AI Agent Johan
This post is part of the AI Agent Johan series. Start from the beginning here or follow the full series via the links below.
Post 1 — Introduction: Can AI Agent Johan predict if the Netherlands will win the 2026 World Cup Soccer?
Post 2 — Data layer: Building AI Agent Johan’s Brain – The data layer
Post 3 — AI Builder training: AI Agent Johan: Training the AI Builder model
Post 4 — Copilot Studio setup: Bringing AI Agent Johan in Copilot Studio to life 🤖
Post 5 — First prediction NL vs. Japan: AI Agent Johan his first prediction for NL against Japan
Post 6 — AI Agent Johan’s revenge NL vs. Sweden: AI Agent Johan’s revenge: Netherlands vs Sweden
Post 7 — NL vs. Tunisia: AI Agent Johan is on fire: Netherlands vs. Tunisia — can he make it two in a row?
