“The absence of Ronaldo and Messi will not have an impact on the interest of sponsors in the World Cup,” FIFA President Joseph Blatter said recently. That was a bold statement, if hardly sincere. In fact, the chances of the World Cup taking place without the world’s two biggest stars are not that high after all: Argentina, for all their problems, cannot be written off just yet. The same is true for Portugal. Argentina are 5th in the standings in South America , and in principle all they have to do is remain in that spot: despite the fact that the 5th-ranked team will have to go through the ignominy of playoffs, opponents are generally weaker at that stage (in this case the likely candidates are Costa-Rica and Honduras).

But Maradona’s men are still in a position to overtake Venezuela, Colombia, and Uruguay. To remain in their current 5th spot, they will have to first win at home against Peru, before securing at least a draw in Uruguay.

The first task hardly seems insurmountable: despite having some world-class forwards (Bremen’s Claudio Pizarro and Hamburg’s Paolo Guerrero), the Peruvians clearly lack depth and substantial quality. With Uruguay, things are more complicated. But Messi, for one, is currently in perfect form (he has scored 5 goals in his last five appearances). Second, Argentina have generally played well against the Uruguayans in recent times (4 wins in the last 5 official games). Thirdly, Uruguay have little else besides Atlético Madrid’s Diego Forlán and Ajax’s Luis Suárez.

We therefore think Argentine retains an 80% chance of making it to South Africa.