World Cup Challenge: Final

And so the World Cup draws to a close. FIFA did a surprisingly decent job of predicting match outcomes in a world cup that has been hard to predict even for the most dedicated football fans. There is still one more game. Let’s see if FIFA got the final right.

Germany VS Argentina

FIFA Result 

Germany 1 Argentina 2

Germany 1
Ozil (50′)

Argentina 2
Messi (69′)(P)
Messi (90′)

Germany scored early, but gave up a penalty, and then in the dying minutes of the game, Messi scored to give Argentina the victory.

World Cup Result 

Germany 1 Argentina 0

Germany 1
Goetze (113′)

Argentina 0

A close game that could have gone either way. Argentina failed to score in at least three clear chances, and they paid for it when the Germans scored the only goal of the match late in extra time.

Conclusion

It is very hard to boil down a sport like football down to just a few stats and predict what the result will be. There are things that cannot be quantified, the psychological pressure, location, and other factors. This means that a 40% accuracy rate is good all things considered. It was a very unpredictable world cup, and many people made worse guesses. FIFA also determined there would be about 60 fewer goals that we’ve had in the tournament, which is not surprising since its been the highest scoring World Cup since 1998. All in all, FIFA does a good job of predicting results, if it doesn’t really predict the exact scores. Asking for the software to do so would be insane.

It will be interesting to see in future tournaments if there is an improvement in the accuracy rate. My guess its it would be difficult, unless they find a better way to simulate the psychology of the players than the form method they are using now. In a game where mentality is crucial, there needs to be a better way to account for that than just a stat boost or penalty.

Finally congratulations to Germany on a well won game. It stings a little, but that is the game.