France Have Best Chance of Winning World Cup

April 11th, 2006 | by: WC Bob |

Our Portugal blog tipped me to this table (click on it to make it readable) in The Times newspaper that shows the percentage chance that the various World Cup participants have to advance from their group, get to the quarterfinals, etc. The most startling finding is that France have the best chance of winning the tournament. This might be news to just about everyone, including the French. I decided to do some poking around to see how these numbers are calculated by the Decision Technology group at the University of Warwick. I could go on for hours explaining their computer models, but frankly I don’t understand any of it. Go ahead and have a look for yourself and maybe you can explain how these are the top ten teams most likely to win the World Cup.

Chance of winning the World Cup

France 11.6%
Brazil 11.3%
Germany 11.1%
Holland 11%
Spain 10.1%
Czech Republic 8.2%
Italy 5.8%
Portugal 5.1%
Argentina 4.9%
Sweden 4.9%

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://portugal.worldcupblog.org Luis Paulo

I understand that France got a lucky draw and even lukier to face someone from the Group H at the roud of 16. That would easely place them at the quarter finals. But after that everything changes.
http://andre.schtuff.com André

For what I understand, this is calculated based on FIFA rankings. Which is doesn’t mean much (see France 2002…)
http://www.worldcupwatcher.com DinoZoff

Don’t think so… Argentina beneath Holland, Spain and Czech Republic???????? Far from real…

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Join the forum!

WCBlog is great.
http://espn LUIS GONAVLES

croatia any 1 ????????/
http://www.originalrudeboy.com/ Tomislav Chagall

yes, me. :)
http://www.famouswhy.com Mike

France has a lot of chances to win but not against Brasil.

read more :

http://articles.famouswhy.com/category/sports/
http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2006/a-fancy-formula-for-predicting-world-cup-victories.html A Fancy Formula for Predicting World Cup Victories – FIFA World Cup 2006 – World Cup 2006 Blog

[...] P(n) = λne-λ over n! That is all you need to know to predict the World Cup winner. The formula is used by a firm that boasts of its accomplishments in predicting football matches. A few months back when we looked at their predictions they had France listed as the team with the best probability of winning the World Cup. The data has changed and so have the probabilities for each team. [...]
vinodkumar

Sir,
A nice football bog I like it and thanks for having these information.
noli

Sweden and Ibrahimovic are unstoppable.
Kevin Ngan

i am thinking about betting $2000 on france to win the world cup r u sure they gonna win
http://www.sreejith.info Sreejith Kumar

I don’t think France is going to repeat 1998. The best chances are for Italy. They have the best defense in the world, a decent midfield and strike. They are yet to concede a goal from the opposition in the tournament. The only goal was an own goal. I support the Azzurris. See http://www.sreejith.info All of Italy’s matches covered there……