So Brazil will win the World Cup, or at least that’s what Goldman Sachs would have us believe.
In fact, the investment bank reckons that it’s Brazil who will be crowned champions after beating Argentina convincingly in the final. To get to the final, Brazil will have beaten Germany and Argentina will have overcome Spain.
Er, England will apparently stumble in Group D and not even make the knockout rounds, drawing 1-1 in each of their three games, with Italy, Uruguay and Cost Rica. Uruguay apparently go through from Group D, but have the misfortune to meet Brazil in the quarter finals.
These predictions are part of the just published The World Cup and Economics 2014 ‘book’.
Authors Dominic Wilson and Jan Hatzius say in the book’s introduction:
“Welcome to our 2014 book on the World Cup and Economics. This is our fifth edition since the 1998 Paris competition and the first without Jim O’Neill, who pioneered the previous versions over all those years. While it is hard to match Jim’s football craziness, the group globally is still full of fans of the beautiful game. And it is now possible to acknowledge open support for teams such as Liverpool and Chelsea. We present this guide as a companion to the upcoming Rio Cup, with the usual unnatural mix of football and economics.”
Enough said. The Goldman Sachs team have come to their conclusions via complex modelling – way above my head – so I’ll skip over those.
Suffice to say that poor old England don’t appear to do well out of the predictions. Oh well, there’s always 2018.
