55: World Cup 2010 Predictions

Filled out my bracket for World Cup 2010. I’m not predicting individual outcomes in the group stage but you can derive some results from the R16 and up bracket. Specifically I call for Ivory Coast upsetting Portugal for 2nd place in Group G, Cameroon upsetting Denmark (and then Italy!) to reach the quarters, South Africa making it alive out of Group A (with France advancing instead of Uruguay and Mexico, only to get owned by South Korea in R16). Finally I call England over Argentina (at last!) for third place and Spain over Brazil (at last!) for the Cup. Looking back at it now a lot of these predictions are rather cavalier!

Nate Silver, the god of statistics, is behind ESPN’s new SPI ranking system. He is updating the odds of teams advancing daily based on 10000 simulations a day and the latest actual results. You can also observe his initial predictions (prior to any data) on his site as well. There are some interesting results from Nate’s oddsmaker as well. I had enough difficulty predicting Group A, but Nate doesn’t seem to do any better! Especially after the first round ties the odds of each team advancing are within the range 47 to 53 percent! Also Portugal and Ivory Coast both have good odds of advancing (Drogba, Ronaldo, and home continent remain the x-factors) as do Denmark and Cameroon (52 vs 48 percent).

If you are a USA fan, you should be praying to whatever you believe in that we advance 1st out of Group C, so we can avoid the prospect of playing Germany in R16. (Let England deal with them, they can handle it.) The expectation is for the USA to make it out of group stage but I figure since we are favored to move on, let’s push further and get a quarterfinals berth! I don’t have the stones to back this up in my bracket, but I do call a 1-1 tie with England on Saturday…