On Sunday it’s on! The soccer World Cup in Qatar starts. From November 20th to December 18th, a total of 32 teams will be fighting for the World Championship title. In the end there can only be one winner. For an international team of researchers, Brazil is the hottest contender for the title. The University of Innsbruck was also involved. It would be the sixth World Cup title for the Brazilian selection.
The “Seleção” therefore has a 15 percent chance of winning and will be the “clear favourite” in the upcoming tournament in Qatar, the university announced in a broadcast on Monday.
After Brazil, Argentina has the second highest probability of winning at 11.2 percent. The Netherlands comes to 9.7 percent. Germany has 9.2 percent and the 2018 world champion, France, has a 9.1 percent win probability.
The forecast by the scientists from the Universities of Innsbruck, Ghent, Luxembourg and the Technical Universities of Dortmund and Munich combine several statistical models for the playing strengths of the teams with information about the team structure (e.g. market value or number of Champions League players) and socio-economic Country of origin factors (population and gross domestic product).
With the predicted values from the researchers’ model, the entire World Cup was “simulated 100,000 times”. Game by game, following the tournament draw and all FIFA rules. This would result in the probabilities of all teams progressing to the individual tournament rounds and ultimately of winning the World Cup.
