United 2026 FIFA World Cup is Here! Tournament Predictions are Here!

The 2026 FIFA World Cupo kicks-off TODAY, co-hosted by Canada, USA and Mexico.

In this blog post we look back at our existing published research on USA world Cups, before statibg our predictions as to who will win it and what fate has in store for the British teams and also for the co-hosting nations.

We then compare with the predictions of colleagues from some of our mathematical colleagues.

Reflections

Way back in 2018 we were asked to share our thoughts on the then newly announced 2026 FIFA World Cup for Canada-Mexico-USA, a tournament to be co-hosted across North America.

Our piece, linked here, shared our projections about organising the tournament and likely scenarios, such as for urban transport, boosterism and so on. We also reflected on the making use of existing stadiums rather than building many new stadiums from scratch for the tournament.

Relatedly, those of you who follow our academic publications may also be aware of our articles on the USA 94 edition of the FIFA World Cup:

Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2022. Hybrid goals: Institutional complexity and ‘legacy’in a global sporting mega-event. Public Management Review, 24(3), pp.372-397.

Tennent, K.D. and Gillett, A.G., 2020. Opportunities for all the Team: Entrepreneurship and the 1966 and 1994 Soccer World Cups. In Sport and Entrepreneurship (pp. 145-166). Routledge.

We have also very recently revised and updated our chapter 'a brief history of the world cup as a business' in the book 'The Business of the World Cup'. The first edition, which appeared in 2022 in time for the Qatar tournament, was very popular. So, were delighted to be asked to participate in a new edition to coincide with the 2026 World Cup:

Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2027. A Brief History of the FIFA World Cup as a Business. In The Business of the FIFA World Cup (pp. 4-24). Routledge.

 

Predictions

But what of the on-pitch activities? Well, as our readers know, we like to do tournament predictions and wherever possible compare to other 'expert' academics and pundits. As usual, both of us predicted results for the entire tournament and also rolled dice for a bit of fun to see if we are more accurate than random chance!  Results are:

Name	Winners	Runner-up	Third Place	Fourth Place
Kevin	Brazil	Croatia	Netherlands	Argentina
Alex	Brazil	Spain	Argentina	France
Dice	Egypt	Mexico	South Africa	France

Alex predicts that Brazil will beat current Holders Spain by 2-1 to lift the Cup for the sixth time, but the first time since 2002.  This would fit a pattern; Brazil have never waited longer than five tournaments to win it, so they are due that victory!  

He predicts that England will reach the Round of 16 where they will be beaten 0-2 by Spain on their way to the Final. Meanwhile, of the British Home Nations, Scotland will progress out of the Group Stage for the first time in history, but face 2-3 defeat to Netherlands in the Round of 32.

Of the three host nations; Canada and Mexico will both finish second in their respective groups before Mexico knock-out Canada 2-0 in the Round of 32, then Mexico lose 2-3 to Netherlands in the Round o f 16. USA will win Group D before losing 1-2 to Ecuador in the Round of 32. 

Kevin also sees Scotland's bravehearts losing to Netherlands in the Round of 32, but predicts a penalty shoot-out will decide that after a 1-1 draw is not settled by extra-time.  England, he predicts, will lose 2-3 to Brazil in the Quarter Finals.  Brazil will ultimately win the Cup, he proclaims, suggesting a 1-1 draw followed by a Brazil winning goal in extra-time.

His outlook for the co-hosts sees Canada falling at the Round of 32, losing 1-2 to Czech Republic after finshing second place in the Group. USA will win its Group , beat Iraq and Korea Republic in the knockout stages, before crashing out 0-3 to Croatia in the Quarter-Final.  Mexico will win every Group stage game but exit in the Round of 16 at the hands of England.

The dice, as wild as ever, predict Egypt to play co-hosts Mexico in the Final, 3-3 after 90 minutes followed by a further 1 goal for Mexico and 5 for Egypt in the most exciting period of extra-time in the entire history of World Cups.  Scotland will win Group C before losing to Netherlands in the Round of 32, whilst England will go out in the Round of 16 courtesy of a 4-5 defeat at the hands of South Africa. Other than Mexico, of the co-hosts, both Canada and USA will falter at the Group Stage.

Compare to Colleagues

The Corridor of Uncertainty is a podcast at the intersection of maths & sport, hosted by Dr Jess Hargreaves & Dr Rich Bingham, two mathematicians at the University of York. In their episode dated 9th June 2026 they calculate, using their own mathematical formula, the liklihood of each participating team winning the competition. According to their number crunching, Spain are most likely to lift the Cup, followed by Argentina, France and then England.

They also invited a special guest, Prof James Reade (Uni of Reading), who introduced his own set of figures to offer an alternative prediction: Favouring Argentina, then Spain, France and Portugal as most likely to take top honours. His prediction for England/ Fifth most likely to win.

The outcomes then are very much open to debate. What is certain is that the next few weeks will provide good opportunity for more blog posts and podcasts!

As usual we will try to update our predictions at each stage when it is know who has qualified.

Please note that the above predictions are for fun only and are not advice for betting on the outcomes of these or any football games. The authors cannot  accept any liability for the performance or outcomes.

Euro 2024 Latest

The Group Stage ended with England through to the Round of Sixteen but Scotland knocked out, unable to go through in a 'best third place' capacity.  All of our predictions were for Scotland to lead a 'Highland Charge' through to the knockout rounds for the first time but it was just not to be.

Scotland's first game was also their heaviest ever defeat in the Championship, suffering a 1-5 defeat to hosts Germany. Once more their 'top scorer' all time record is 1 goal, this time around Scot McTominay joins that list for scoring Scotland's solitary goal of the three games, against Switzerland. Well, not exactly the solitary goal, as they notched another in that opening game against Germany, although that was an own-goal by Antonio Rudiger.  Although not recorded by the UEFA website, technically Rudiger became Scotland's joint top goalscorer at a European  Championships!

England have looked uninspiring in each game, and weak at the back.  Their 'safefty first' approach of passing out from the back has caused some high stress levels amongst those of us watching; These players are not Barcelona and the wayward passes across midfield and defence, and a goalkeeper that sometimes plays as sweeper, often look clumsy and too inviting to the opposition who tend to press hard and find a goal.  However some last gasp heroics from Bellingam (bicycle kick!) and Kane (confident header from Ivan Toney's flick to the back post) spared the three lions from an embarrassing flight home.  

Like it or not it is a tactic that has just about worked, and other teams have done well in tournaments in the same way.  Momentum is everything and in knockout football the key is to get out of the group with as few injuries or cards as possible then gain momentum, peaking in the big games.  England somehow won their group, scraped past Slovakia, and now it is time to turn on the style.  Maybe, just maybe, this time we can say #itscominghome ?

Here are out predictions for the Round of 16, what are yours?

	AG	KT	Dice
Switzerland v Italy	0 - 1	0 - 1	0 - 2
Germany v Denmark	2 - 1	3 - 1	3 - 1
England v Slovakia	2 - 0	0v0 (5v4 on pens)	0 - 4
Spain v Georgia	3 - 1	4 - 0	2 - 2 (3 v 1 AET)
France v Belgium	1 – 1 (3 – 2 AET)	2v2 (5 - 5 AET  5v4 pen)	0 v 0  (0 v 0 AET,  0 v 1 pens)
Portugal v Slovenia	3 - 1	2 - 0	6 - 3
Romania v Netherlands	1 - 1 (2 - 3 AET)	1 - 0	0 v 0 (2 v 0 AET)
Austria v Turkey	4 -1	1 - 1 (3 - 2 AET)	0 - 5

As usual, we present these predictions for fun only and do not encourage gambling, nor do we suggest that you use any of this information to inform it!

Celebrating Ten Years of Soccer Mad Boffins with a Euro 2024 Tournament Prediction

It was June 2014 when we founded this blog. The launch coincided not only with our FIFA scholarship to research the business and administrative history of the 1966 FIFA World Cup, but also with the start of that years FIFA World Cup, the 20th edition of the tournament hosted in Brazil.

We followed the tournament with various comments and fun posts and who could predict that we would still be going strong in 2024!?

Speaking of predictions, the first time that we attempted to predict the scores and outcomes of a football tournament was the following edition, Russia 2018.  Which leads us nicely to the present.

Today, Friday 14th June, is the start of the UEFA European Championship. Of the British teams, Scotland face Germany on the opening evening, whilst England play Serbia on Sunday 16th.

BBC pundits generally favour England or France to win the cup which can you read by.following this link.

Sky Sports report betting odds also favour the cross-channel rivals but show that Germany and Portugal are close behind, see here.

The NY Times in collaboration with The Athletic has a more statistical approach, showing Germany as having a squad 'built to win', Portugal as 'having worked the goalkeeeper more than any other team' and Belgium's Lokaku as being a top striker.  England, they sneer dismissively, will be heavily reliant on Harry Kane's goals. See here.

Being free thinkers, we make our own predictions, as well as randomly rolling a dice as a control test.  Using our football knowledge and gut instinct, we have some interesting ideas:

On the group games for Scotland and England:

Scotland

Game	AG	KT	Dice
Germany v Scotland	0-2	1-1	0-3
Scotland v Switzerland	3-2	0-1	1-4
Scotland v Hungary	1-0	2-1	3-0

 

England

Game	AG	KT	Dice
Serbia v England	0-3	1-1	1-0
Denmark v England	0-2	0-2	2-6
England v Slovenia	5-0	1-1	2-0

 

Regarding tournament progress, both Alex and Kevin see the Brits as qualifying from their respective groups, itself a huge achievement for the Scottish bravehearts, but are less confident in England than the professional pundits or bookmakers, predicting a Quarter Final exit.  The dice rolled that both nations will crash out in the Round of 16.

Progress

Team	AG	KT	Dice
Scotland	R16	R16	R16
England	QF	QF	R16

The UK General Election will be held just days after the round of 16. As we reported in our 2021 chapter on sport and populism Harold Wilson lost the 1970 General Election just days after England crashed out of the 1970 World Cup to Germany. Rishi Sunak must be pretty confident that England will progress to the Quarter Finals too!

In terms of who will win the tournament:

Winners

Alex (AG) : France (winners), Portugal (runner-up)

Kevin (KT): Portugal (winners), Croatia (runner-up)

Dice: Croatia (winners), Ukraine (runner-up)

Over to YOU

Who do YOU think will win? How far do YOU think that England or Scotland can go? Please leave us a comment below.

PS: We hope that you enjoy the Euro 2024 tournament and in celebrating 2014-2024 of Soccer Mad Boffins.  Please read the above article for fun, we offer no advice nor encouragement for betting/gambling on the tournament and do this prediction exercise solely for entertainment and to see if we can be more accurate than the pundits!

Euro 2020(2021) Predictions: How did we do? How did we compare?

We are very pleased to present our full technical report, which includes a detailed summary of our predictions of the UEFA Euro Championship 2020 (held in 2021).

We conclude that the tournament was exciting and also somewhat unpredictable, and compare our own predictions with those of other publicised predictions and scenarios including Daily Mirror and University of Reading.

The full report can be found here

Euro 2021: Great Brits' Second Fixtures

Another week and another set of results for our Home Nations heroes!

Wales has now fulfilled three fixtures and qualified for the Round of 16. Well done Bale & Co. 

Their progress was though predicted by the dice. More about that next time when we consider the final group rankings.

For now it is enough to say that our random dice roles "knew" the welsh would beat Turkey, although not the exact scoreline. Which is more than can be said of us, as we were not so optimistic, predicting a draw at best.

The biggest game of the weekend for us was England v Scotland.  Yes we know that there were many big games, not least Germany v Portugal, but from a soccermadboffins perspective it was the game at Wembley that was most anticipated.

Alex thought it would be an end-to-end thriller of guts and glory, with England eventually winning 3-2.  Kevin was a little more conservative, believing that England would scrape past the Scots 1-0 (perhaps a Harry Kane penalty?). The dice called it at 0-2 to the Scots!  

The reality was 0-0 but the game was far from boring. Some great passing moves and several chances on goal for both sides made it an edge-of-the-seat emotional rollercoaster. But one thing was apparent: If Harry Kane is marked out of the game or deprived of service, then there are no prolific strikers in either country at this level. Perhaps an indicator of the reliance on imported talent in the Premier League? 

Finally, on Sunday afternoon Italy beat Wales by 1-0, although the welsh were down to ten men for a  portion of the game, so it really wasn't a bad result, although a win would have been a nice Fathers Day gift for some!

How did we do with this one? Well Kevin was bang on with his prediction, whilst Alex got the outcome right, but not the exact score.  The dice were wrong about everything.

Full details are provided in the table below which compares the actual results with our predictions.

More coming soon, including a round-up of the remaining Group Stage scores, as well as final Group rankings, and our predictions. How closely did we call it? Tune in next time to find out!

Euro 2021: Great Brits' First Fixtures

What a few days! All three of the GB teams that qualified for the Euros have now played their first fixtures.  

As reported previously, we are once again running our predictions vs those of a dice throw.  So far the only actual correct prediction was Alex who fortold of Wales' 1-1 draw with Switzerland.

Today saw a valiant Scotland lose 0-2 to the Czech Republic, a result that did not live up to either or our optimistic predictions, nor those of the dice.

Football took one step towards home yesterday when England scraped past Croatia by a goal to nil.  Neither Alex nor Kevin had seen that coming, perhaps bearing in mind the last time that these two met in a major tournament, and/or England's usual stuttering start in these things.  The dice showed most confidence calling it 3-0 to England and although the scoreline was far more conservative, all points did go England's way.

When we look at goals scored things do look more accurate: Alex, Kevin and the dice all predicted that Wales would find the back of the net once. Alex and Kevin also both knew that England were good for a goal against Croatia, and the dice somehow knew that the Croats would fail to score. Kevin was most realistic about Scotland's finishing, whilst the dice cannily 'knew' that the Czech's would put two past them.

More updates coming soon. We'll try to report back regularly in relation to the three 'Home' nations involved as well as the usual Group Stage summary and Final Report once the tournament has drawn to a close. 

So, watch this space!

Euro 2020 (in 2021!) Predictions

With the covid-delayed Euro 2020 now finally just a few days away, we decided to follow soccermadboffins tradition and map out three scenarios: Kevin’s predictions, Alex’s predictions, and the predictions of a dice roll.

A quick explanation as to how the dice roll scores were calculated

-        If rolling a 1, 2, or 3 that’s the score, 

-        If rolling 4 or 5 it counted as ‘nil’, and;

-        Rolling a 6 meant roll again and use whatever number comes up (so the upper limit of normal time is 6 goals but it is fairly unlikely to come up).

So what are the predictions?

As usual at the end of the Group Stage we will show all of our predictions and those of the dice vs the reality.  If we can find them, after the group stages we will also try to compare with any algorithm type predictions as proposed by statisticians working for business consultancies and universities.

We cannot all get every prediction right, so we will then try to do another set of predictions based on who actually gets out of the Group Stages and as the knock-out rounds unfold.

But in the meantime we had a go at predicting the entire tournament…

Random Dice Rolls…

The dice interestingly predict England to finish 3rd in their group, behind Scotland and Czech Republic, then face North Macedonia in Budapest for a crunch Round of 16 fixture...which North Macedomia win 5-3 after extra time!

Also in the Round of 16 Scotland lose 2-3 to Germany in Dublin. 

Wales finish third in Group A behind Switzerland and Italy, progressing to a showdown with France in the Round of 16, winning 3-2 to become the Great British hope before folding to a 0-6 defeat by the Czech Republic in the Quarter-Finals.

Surprise breakout teams will include Finland, who will reach the semi-final. Also....

Winner: Austria to convincingly beat Hungary 5-1, to lift the trophy!

Austrian team celebrating...a realistic prediction for this year's Euros?

Alex

Predicts England to finish second in their Group, before crashing out to Sweden after a penalty shoot-out in the Round of 16.

Predicts Scotland to finish in third place in their group, just behind England, to reach the Round of 16 where they lose to the Netherlands 1-2 after extra-time.

Predicted Wales to achieve just 1 point to finish third in their group and fail to qualify for the Round of 16.

Winners: Germany to beat Portugal in a close final.

Germany is used to celebrating...could it be deja vu in 2021 and is it starting to get boring yet?

Kevin

England will win Group D before meeting France in the Round of 16, who will beat them on penalties.

Scotland will finish bottom of Group D and fail to progress.

Wales are to be Great Britiain's best hope, finishing as runners-up in Group A just behind Italy, then beating Denmark on penalties in the Round fo 16, before losing 1-2 to Portugal in the Quarter-Final. 

Winner: Belgium to beat France, also in a close final.

Could the Euros bring some excitement to Belgium?

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Check back soon for progress reports on how our predictions (and those fo the dice) fare against reality! (and against statistical modellers such as at Economics Observatory).

Remember, these predictions are for fun only please do not use them as the basis for any gambling decisions!

The big kick-off is this Friday when Turkey play Italy. Wales play Switzerland on Saturday, England kick-off their campaign v Croatia on Sunday, and then Scotland line-up against the Czech Republic on Monday. 

To celebrate, we have a free online public lecture and Q&A with former FIFA-listed referee Keith Hackett. It will take place this Saturday 12th June starting at 2.30pm prompt. It will last for one hour and tickets are completely free, for more info and to book your place please click here.

First Explorations into Business History: Forfar Athletic Year Book 1961-62

In the first of an occasional series of articles about Forfar Athletic, Kevin looks at one of his earliest publications...

The 2018 FIFA World Cup has ended and the Scottish League Cup Group Stages are the main game in town! The Scottish League 1 Club Forfar Athletic hit the headlines on Sunday after winning 4-5 on penalties against East Fife, in the group stages of the Scottish League Cup.  This gained attention south of the border as it fulfilled a famous tongue twister allegedly invented by Eric Morecambe to tease his friend James Alexander Gordon, who read out the football results on BBC Radio for many years.  The joys of Scottish lower league football are little known south of the border; most English fans have probably only heard of clubs such as Forfar, or their Angus rivals Brechin City, Arbroath and Montrose via the football results. Indeed, Jonathan Meades called a 2009 documentary on small-town Scotland The Football Pools Towns in reference to this phenomena.

But these clubs and indeed these lovely little towns do have an existence outside of the teleprinter and the classified football results.  I discovered this as a history undergraduate at the University of Dundee, when a friend with a car decided we should start going to some lower league matches. We went to Station Park, home of Forfar for a Tuesday night fixture against Queens Park which the Loons won 3-0, and I and another of my fellow students kept going back.  And back.

This new addiction led to me contributing a few times to a fanzine, The Loonatic, and here is one of my first attempts at business history - a review of the club's 1961-62 yearbook, published in the summer of 1961:

Click images to enlarge

Perhaps it is time for some more business history on the topic of the Loons, or at least Scottish football as a whole?

For all their summer optimism, the Loons' hopes that Mr Christie might help their young team get promoted came to nothing, as they finished the second division in 16th, the 'Bully Wee' winning the championship and 'Doonhammers' being runners-up. But at least Brechin were bottom and Angus bragging rights maintained!