World Cup Predictions
We all have a favorite team and an idea of who we think will win the World Cup, but these are mostly subjective opinions. There are also some who use scientific methods to come up with a more objective opinion of who will win, with varying success. No one predicted France would win the 2018 World Cup, it was Brazil, Germany and Spain that were favorites. We have started listing predictions for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, though most will come out in the months leading up to the event. We have also collated predictions from previous World Cups, in and 2010, 2014 and 2018 where you can read the predictions and see how they compared to the actual results.
Methods
The predictions use various methods, such as analyzing bookmaker odds and using recent results and rankings. The predictions can also be a result-based model which models directly the probability of a game outcome (win, loss or draw), compared to a score-based model, which focusses on the match score. The match score model better suits a tournament lie the FIFA World Cup as the game scores are important in the group stage to determine which teams progress. Many of them using Monte Carlo simulations, which means that they simulate the tournament thousands of times, and the probability that a team wins the tournament represents the share of simulations in which it wins it.
Paul the Octopus makes a World Cup predictionOther References
- Dyte, D. and S. R. Clarke (2000): "A ratings based Poisson model for World Cup soccer simulation," Journal of the Operational Research Society, 51 (8), 993– 998.
Related Pages
- Predictions for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and for previous tournaments in 2014, 2010, 2018.
- Results from previous World Cups: Russia 2018, Brazil 2014, Germany 2006, South Africa 2010
- Olympic Games medal predictions
- Winter Olympics Medal Predictions
Any comments, suggestions, or corrections? Please let us know.
