Statisticians have reportedly revealed that defending champions Spain look set to win the World Cup and would outgun Brazil due to the interlocking qualities of their squad.
The Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory said that it had taken an in-depth look at the career trajectory of all the 32 teams participating in the World Cup that starts on Thursday in Brazil.
CIES Football Observatory said that this approach has allowed them to predict a hypothetical scenario for the outcome of the competition, suggesting that Spain will beat Brazil in the final, with Argentina in third place and France in fourth position, Sport24 reported.
CIES Football Observatory's experts, who apply econometric methods to all aspects of the game, number-crunched a vast haul of data, taking into account league matches and goals during each player's career to date, as well as in the last two years, plus national team caps since 2012 and the total number of World Cup games ever played.
Based on the data, the Swiss-based statistics company combed through all eight World Cup groups to assess who was likely to reach the last 16 and tipped Brazil to beat The Netherlands in the first knock-out round, while Japan would lose to Italy, France would oust Nigeria, and Portugal would dump out Russia.
The analysts said that in the four other last-16 games Spain would defeat Croatia, England would elbow out Colombia, Ecuador would lose to Argentina, and that Germany would show Belgium the exit, which would set up a series of exciting quarterfinals, with Brazil knocking out Italy, France beating Portugal, Spain defeating England, and Germany losing to Argentina.
The analysts revealed that Spain would go on to win the tournament after beating Argentina in the semifinals and Brazil, who would beat France in the semis, in the finals of the World Cup, the report added.