Argentina to win. Probably.
Michael Wagstaff • 18 December 2022
We predict Argentina to win but it's very close.
Over the course of the World Cup our predictive model, based on form and the capabilities of the squad, calculated the probability of each team progressing to the next round. How well did it do?
Here are the scores for each round:
- It successfully predicted 12 out of the 16 countries to get out of the group stage. It didn't predict that Germany and Belgium would exit so early or that Morocco would go through along with Japan, South Korea and Australia.
- It predicted seven of the eight teams progressing from the round of 16. It didn't see Morocco beating Spain but then ago who did?
- The model didn't have a good quarter final only predicting two of the four winners. It's bittersweet that it correctly predicted France to beat England. In fact, before a ball had been kicked, it predicted an England exit at the quarter final stage.
- It correctly predicted that France and Argentina would make it to the final.
At the start of the tournament, the model predicted that Brazil would win the World Cup but Croatia saw to that in the quarter final. Argentina and France were second and third favourites to make the final in our very first prediction.
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