Happy Friday. Goldman Sachs thinks conventional rankings are not sufficiently bearish on England’s chances at the World Cup this summer:
We present a model for predicting the outcome of the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19. It is similar to our model for prior World Cups but extended along several dimensions.
[…]
The model says that Spain has a 26% probability of winning the trophy, followed by France at 19%, Argentina at 14%, Brazil at 8% and England at 5%. Spain is predicted to win because it has the highest Elo ranking, supported by scoring talent and good momentum into the competition. Argentina is penalised by the “winner’s slump”, i.e. the statistical underperformance of reigning champions in the following World Cup; France suffers from likely facing top-ranked Spain in the semifinals; and England underperforms its Elo rating given historical tournament disappointment, geographical headwinds (likely facing Mexico in high-altitude Mexico City), and a slightly unlucky draw.
Most of the bank’s analysis in derived from the various national teams’ Elo rankings, together with a regression model that uses a team’s scores against different opponents over “the entire history of mandatory international matches since 1978”. Jan Hatzius and team work on the reasonable assumption that scoring more goals is rarer than scoring fewer:
