The World Cup in Qatar has already started and there are many speculations about who will be the winner. Since the well-known Octopus Paul predicted the victory of the Spanish team in 2010 in the World Cup in South Africa, many tools have been used to predict the winners of major sports competitions.
The era of Big Data. We are in a time in which the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data has been taken to another level. In this sense, the University of Oxford has created a mathematical model devised by Joshua Bull that, based on tests and tests, has determined which is the team that is most likely to win this edition of the World Cup.
Winner and curiosities of the painting. The Oxford University Twitter account has published an image of what the competition draw would look like in the playoffs after simulating the group stage results 1 million times.
In the pairings you can see what chances of success the teams have and who will be the winner of each match. According to this study, Brazil will emerge champion after beating Belgium in the final and will eliminate Spain in the quarterfinals.
Brazil and Argentina, the favorites. The Oxford model determines that the teams most likely to win the competition are Brazil (14.72%) and Argentina (14.36%). However, as both teams are on the same side of the draw, Belgium (6.37%) would be the big winner, as they would reach the final despite having other European teams with more options (Netherlands with 7, 84%, Spain with 7.03% and France with the same percentage as the Belgians).
What factors are taken into account? The model has been created by the Elo Ratings analysis team focusing on every match of the participating teams since 2018. The algorithm has simulated up to 100,000 times each tie to determine which teams are most likely to win.
The author of this study, Joshua Bull, has explained in detail how this algorithm works on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube channel.
Argentina, winner. Another prediction model that became very popular before the competition began is that of the financial company Liberum Capital, with a Big Data analysis based on factors such as the match history of each team, direct confrontations between teams, an infinite number of Individual statistics of each player and how these can influence depending on who they share the line-up with or who they play against.
On this occasion, the prediction fell on the albiceleste side, which would defeat Gareth Southgate's England in the final. Spain, in this case, would reach the semifinals and lose to Argentina.
Via @UniofOxford
