FIFA World Cup 2022 - Who will win? What are the chances for England and Wales?

 

With the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar just two days away the big question dominating conversations in the pubs, staff rooms, canteens and internet forums is 'who do you think will win it?'

It's a great question and opinions are split. Most football fans will have their opinions.

The BBC has reported that statistical experts at Opta/Stats Perform have crunched the numbers and run the algorithms to predict that Brazil has the best chance to win (15.8% chance), followed closely by Argentina (12.6), France (12.2), Spain (9.1), and England (8.7).  

You don't really need a PhD in computer science to come to those conclusions, a simple glance at the FIFA World Rankings places its top 5 as being Brazil, Belgium, Argentina, France, and England. So the only real surprise is their altogether omission of Belgium and maybe also the insertion of Spain as 4th favourite (FIFA rank them in 7th place). 

A glance around the likes of BBC and Sky Sports pundit teams suggests that the ex-footballer's and TV presenters choices also show a trend towards Brazil, Argentina and France. 

As usual we here at SoccerMadBoffins have also made our own predictions and to show if we're more accurate that random chance we have also rolled the dice to see what the fickle finger of fate points at.

Also as usual, we'll produce a more detailed summary of all our working out in due course, but for the sake of brevity here are our predictions compared to those of the maths wizards at Opta/Stats Perform, once again begging the question: Algorithm, human brain, or random chance? 

Alex's predictions are boringly similar to Opta but re-ordered. Has he been too slavish to FIFA rankings?

Kevin favours Germany and also predicts a good run for England. Is he a visionary or way off?

As usual, most interestingly are the dice, which favour British minnows Wales to win the final 6-0 against USA, and for Germany to win third-place playoff against Portugal 6-1.

This leads to our next question, what are the chances for our 'Home Nation' sides England and Wales, both in Group B?

England

Opta predicts England have a 63% chance to top the Group, 17% chance of reaching the final and 8.7% chance to win it, as we mentioned above this makes them the fifth most likely team to win.

Alex also predicts that England will top Group B, before losing to Netherlands on penalties in the Round of 16 (sound familiar?)

Kevin sees England as finishing in third place, losing to Germany on penalties in the semi-final (sound even more familiar?). He also thinks that the Three Lions will top Group B

The Dice however predict England to finish bottom of Group B suffering defeat to IR Iran, and scraping draws with USA and Wales.

Wales

Opta predicts Wales has a 13.9% chance to win Group B, 1.8% chance to reach the final and 0.6% chance to win the tournament.

Alex thinks that Wales will finish Group B as runners-up, before losing to Senegal in the Round of 16.

Kevin believes Wales could finish Group B in second place, before losing to Netherlands in the Round of 16.

The dice meanwhile will win Group B, beat Senegal in the Round of 16 (winning on penalties after a thrilling 6-6 draw), beat Saudi Arabia 4-3 in the Quarter Finals, Germany 3-2 in the Semi-Finals, and win the Cup by beating USA by 6-0 in the Final. Ultimately this hinges on Wales having world beating fire-power to overcome defensive deficiency. The big question is: Do they have a new Ian Rush?

As usual, all predictions are personal opinions and are just for fun.  We make no claims or suggestions for any betting purposes. Please do not allow our ideas to inform any betting decisions.

Guest Lecture by David Smith

 

On Thursday 10th November Dr Alex Gillett hosted David Smith, CB, FCIPS, as part of the Public Sector Leaders seminar series at University of York School for Business and Society. David's talk had the title 'Procurement is the new rock n' roll'.

The talk mostly focussed on the history and development of Government Procurement and its professionalisation within the civil service.

The relevance to Soccer Mad Boffins is that David is a former football referee with the Surrey FA and he made some comparison between refereeing football games and overseeing procurement as part of the presentation.

David is also frontman of the band Gypsy's Kiss, a forerunner of Iron Maiden, which reunited in 2018 to play live gigs with a new line-up based around David as an original member.  They have music on CD and streaming services such as Spotify, t-shirts and more: https://www.gypsyskiss.net

David gave a fascinating talk and afterwards took many questions from the enthusiastic audience. At the very end he presented Alex with a Gypsy's Kiss t-shirt.

Africa Business of Sport Podcast

The Soccer Mad Boffins were thrilled that our recent book chapter on the business history of the FIFA World Cup was the subject of discussion for a recent podcast by the Africa Business of Sport podcast.

Hosts Edem Spio and Jabu Mtwa had really enjoyed reading our work and their in-depth coverage of our chapter, and of others which formed the basis for subsequent episodes, is a great endorsement of the book.

Hear the episode here.

The Africa Business of Sport Podcast offers dynamic African perspectives on the biggest topics, stories, developments and talking points in the global sports business industry from the leading figures in the African sport business.

The Africa Business of Sport Podcast is an Africo Media Network production.