Which team is going to win the World Cup?

The first match of this year’s World Cup is taking place this Thursday between Russia and Saudi Arabia. The World Cup probably is the most important event in the gambling industry and thousands of gamblers put their money into betting the World Cup. Not only the gamblers may be interested in the results of the World Cup games, other football fans would also be interested in the results of the games. Therefore, which team is going to win the World Cup is the hottest topic at the moment.

The most straightforward way to predict the result of one game is to see which team’s squad has a higher value. No prediction can guarantee an absolutely correct result, this one is no exception; however, it is certainly a way to help to make predictions. However, the ability of one player and his value are not necessarily to be linearly correlated, if the ability has a accelerating effect on the player’s value, then the team with a higher total value may not have a higher sum of abilities than a team with a relatively lower total value.

Ability of a single player is not the only determinant of one match’s result, there are many other determinants, such as the chemical reaction between players. Some of these determinants could be quantified or easy to be actualised; however, some can be really difficult for being used for applying econometric methods to predict games’ results.

For most of people, relying on squad value is probably the most reliable way to make good predictions about the games’ results.