How to predict the winner of the World Cup

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

29 June 2014

I don’t know much about football: not about the teams, not about the players and certainly not about game strategies. In fact, if you kicked a ball towards me, I’d probably duck to avoid being hit!

All I know about this “beautiful game” is that the aim is to score goals and the team that scores the most wins the match. Still, this is the World Cup Season and with an estimated 3.5 billion followers worldwide (about half the population of the planet!) one needs to be pretty ignorant not to know about it! So, I have watched a few matches and have occasionally checked the table of standings.

 In the first round of the games, teams accumulate points – 3 points are awarded for a win, 1 for a draw and none for a loss. If two teams garner equal points, then the team with a greater “goal difference” is the winner; that is the difference between goals scored and those conceded.

The system of assigning points was decided arbitrarily by the World Football Governing body, FIFA. Indeed I do recall that there was a time when teams used to get only two points for a win.

The challenge of this arbitrary point system is that it is difficult to judge which team is better across the groups. For example, at the time of writing this article (Thursday 26th June), the winner in Group B was The Netherlands with 9 points and in Group C it was Colombia also with 9 points.

Interestingly, these two teams also had the same goal difference of +7: The Netherlands had 10 for and 3 against while Colombia had 9 for and 2 against. Which of the two is better?

Most fans would say The Netherlands is the better team simply because they scored more goals. But as an “outsider” I would look at it differently: I would work out the ratio of goals for to goals against. Thus for The Netherlands this comes to 3.33 while for Colombia it is 4.5. Therefore, I think Colombia is the better team.

Using such ratios, I can attempt to predict the outcomes of the second round matches. Looking at the groups that have concluded their first round matches (A to F at the time of writing), I expect that Brazil with a ratio of 3.5 will defeat Chile which has 1.67. In addition, Colombia (4.5) will beat Uruguay (1).

By the time you read this, those matches will have been played and the results known. You can therefore decide whether my predictions for tonight’s games are reliable: Mexico with a goal ratio of 4 will beat The Netherlands (3.33); Costa Rica (4) will defeat Greece (0.5); France (4) will win against Nigeria (1); and Argentina (2) will defeat Switzerland (1.17).

What about the finals: can we predict who will win? Try you luck.