Predicting the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup Finals Part 2: Knockout Stages & Overall Analysis

And so, a week on from the Final, the dust has settled and the sun has set on the FIFA Women's Cup.

What a tournament it was! Exciting, good quality soccer games.  Watched by millions of viewers around the world.

In the end, the USA won it once more.  But for fans of other teams, it was enjoyable to see things progress and up until the very end there was a chance that the World Cup might be won by a European team.

England did well and got to the semi-finals once more, although ending with a slightly sub-par performance in the third/fourth place play-off game.  But overall, it was a valiant effort and they came very close to reaching the final.  If they had, there is every chance that they could have won it. But unfortunately, it was not to be.

Anyway, what we are excited to tell you about is our second report on our predictions.  Did we do better at foretelling the knockout-stages than we did for the group stage? Did we perform better than the random dice? Who correctly guessed the winners, and how did that differ to the predictions that we made before the tournament even began?

Below is a summary as to how accurate we all were for the Knockout Stages:

	AG	KT	JF	Dice
Total Points Scored / Available	37 / 80	23 / 80	38 / 80	27 / 80
% ACCURACY	46.3%	28.8%	47.5%	33.8%

And for the overall tournament (knockout + group stages):

	AG	KT	JF	Dice
Total Points Scored / Available	139/ 260	113 / 260	102 / 260	88 / 260
% ACCURACY	53.5 %	43.5 %	39.2 %	33.8%

As shown, Alex gets our 'gold medal' as a predictor, being correct about half of the time! Kevin's performance took a fairly dramatic dip but he still finished with a credible 43.5%.  Jon upped his game significantly this time around, being 'king' of the knockout stage predictions to drag his overall total up, but just missing out to Alex.  The dice were the most consistent performers, scoring 33.8% across both group and knockout stages, suggesting that dice are only ever a good way to predict outcomes around 1 out of 3 times.

Back at the very start of the tournament both Kevin and Alex thought that England would finish in fourth place and that is exactly what happened.  the dice' predictions for a South Korea v Jamaica final sadly did not come to pass though and with hindsight, the USA victory should have been predicted.  Our excuse? We thought that being on another continent and not the best of form or strongest USA team might work against them. Ultimately, they found form and peaked to win it, and strength in depth was no problem.

Can the USA Women's team ever be de-throned? Let's find out in four years time!


Members of the 'researchgate' web community can read the short report for yourselves, now available:

Download report now (.pdf file)

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23058.20169