Predicting who will win the World Cup can be fun right?
It’s a bit like expecting Argentina to beat Saudi Arabia, Denmark to thrash Tunisia or even Germany to dent Japan in the Group Stages. All these games were a surprise for viewers as much as it was for the teams playing them.
Who will win the World Cup?
This is something that has been the speculation from the very beginning of the competition and according to a study by sports research firm ‘Stats Perform’ (per Statista and Opta), Brazil are the favourites from a list of the Top 10.
Their artificial intelligence World Cup prediction model predicts that the South American nation are the most likely to win. If they do, that’ll be their first World Cup victory in 20 years.
This learning machine has determined that the rumored favourites, Argentina are placed second most likely winners.
How it works
So to predict why Brazil are favourites to win the World Cup, the prediction model apparently estimated the probability of Brazil’s match outcomes; Win / Draw / Loss and by using betting market odds and the rankings devised by the Stat Perform itself.
All of that data has been collected based on the team’s previous performances, their probability of winning against other teams and possible paths to victory. That therefore takes into account how the teams have also been drawn in the Groups.
Brazil favourites?
According to the data, Brazil is 15.8% more likely to win the World Cup compared to Argentina, 12.6%.
Just behind the South American countries are the Europeans. France leads with 12.2% followed by Spain (9.1%), England (8.7%), Germany (7.8%), Netherlands (7.2%), Portugal (5.8%), Belgium (5.4%) and Denmark (3.5%).
Could the prediction be right?
Your guess is as good as ours. If you look at the past 17 games Brazil played in the World Cup Qualifiers CONMEBOL, they’ve won 14 of them, drew 3 of them and lost none.
Likewise, their last 4 friendly games saw them win all 4, some more comfortably than others. What’s interesting to note is their narrow 1 – 0 win against Japan in June. Japan were very tough opponents, but Brazil managed to pull off the win.
Likewise, Argentina has also played 17 games in the World Cup qualifiers, winning 11 and drawing 6. As for friendly games, they too managed to beat all of the teams in June, September and September, ensuring each opponent couldn’t even score.
Could the 2 – 1 loss to Saudi Arabia be merely a blip on their World Cup journey then?
Why is Canada not in this list?
Simply put… this is Canada’s first appearance at World Cup finals in 36 years. Do you want to know more about how Canada got here, who is in the team and how they’re doing?
Get started here:
