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JP Morgan Quants Predict World Cup Win 2010 for England

Andy said:
Where do I bet money on these games?
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There are many sites (e.g. bwin, WilliamHill). I am not sure if this betting falls under the same laws as gambling. Laws have changed here in the last years.

Since I was a kid, we were organizing in friendly pools. We were starting with bets on all games of the group stage (1X2) no odds. Since there are quite a few surprises, betting "connoisseurs" would emerge at the end.
Starting with odds, things are much more interesting. For instance, you can try a martingale strategy with a strong team :)
 
Go England

I am supporting England regardless of what the quants say....
I am just praying Rooney is fit by the time World Cup gets underway ........and i hope heskey is not the second striker.....i mean seriously i would go with Walcott if no one else comes up....that guy is quick....
 
Rohan said:
I am supporting England regardless of what the quants say....
I am just praying Rooney is fit by the time World Cup gets underway ........and i hope heskey is not the second striker.....i mean seriously i would go with Walcott if no one else comes up....that guy is quick....
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You don't like the heskey rooney partnership? I think it works really well. Heskey holds the ball up, allowing Rooney to run on to flicks and give and go type plays.

He's a good target man. I think especially in the World Cup, (this is a big generalization) a lot of teams are of a general build and physical size. Thus, I think it's very important to have a big man in front of the defenders for both sides of the equation. If you can't pass all day like Brazil or Italy, you need a big guy to compete against a giant defenders from Serbia and Croatia, and to take advantage of smaller South American teams. Especially on set plays.

There's anomalies in every team, but if you're getting trapped by aggressive midfielders, and your strikers are too short to win the ball, it's going to be a long day. Thankfully Capello has focused on style and passing, so Heskey's need may be diminished. Agreed, I don't want him so England can play punt and run, but he has a purpose, and has worked well with Rooney in the past.
 
There are two scenarios that generate criticism:

1) Good players are left out of the squad , but there are good players to offset them.
This is inevitable due the reasons mentioned by prof. Stefanica.

2) Good playeres are left out and no one understands why instead of them, not top players are selected.

In this particular case, I´m talking about
Josué/Kleberson/J Batista / Grafite /Michael Bastos
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Dunga picked a team in his image, hard workers that play with a team mentality, counter attack style.

what you mentioned has always been the big dilemma in Brazil. I have been following world cup soccer since 1982 when one of the best Brazilian teams went (Zico, Socrates and the like). They didn't make it to the semifinals.

In 1994, Brazil brought a team similar to the one is going this year. I remember Carlos Alberto Parreira (their coach that year), getting a lot of flak for including Branco (an aging defenseman) in the Team. He was vindicated when, in the game against the Netherlands, Branco scored a goal in a set piece from quite a distance of the goal. Brazil went to win 3-2 and win the World Cup after 24 years.
 
Stefan Zota said:
Till the World Cup, checkout the Champions League Final:
http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/championsleague

You can see some of the top players in the World Cup (e.g. Robben, Millito, Olic, Schweinsteiger, Stankovic, Eto'o, Sneijder)

Some stats
http://www.soccerway.com/matches/20...yern-munchen/fc-internazionale-milano/932705/
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Inter won, great game from Millito. Two simple clean goals. As I said this guy is up there with Messi. Sad that Argentina doesn't have a strong manager ...
 
Stefan Zota said:
Inter won, great game from Millito. Two simple clean goals. As I said this guy is up there with Messi. Sad that Argentina doesn't have a strong manager ...
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I agree, Argentina has a collection of brilliant individuals - Higuain, Milito, Messi, Veron, etc, but they're not a team. The manager is incapable of making these guys work together with whatever is remaining of his fried brain. I don't see them going past the quarters (again).

It's really hard to pick out a real powerhouse this time other than Spain, and we might not be able to tell till the first couple of rounds of games.

On another note, there's a lot of fuss being made about the so called group of death - Brazil, Portugal, Cote d'ivoire and North Korea. For me, the real group of death is the one with the other African powerhouse - Ghana, Germany, Australia and Serbia. Now that's a killer group.
 
Portugal

Avinash Burra said:
I agree, Argentina has a collection of brilliant individuals - Higuain, Milito, Messi, Veron, etc, but they're not a team. The manager is incapable of making these guys work together with whatever is remaining of his fried brain. I don't see them going past the quarters (again).

It's really hard to pick out a real powerhouse this time other than Spain, and we might not be able to tell till the first couple of rounds of games.

On another note, there's a lot of fuss being made about the so called group of death - Brazil, Portugal, Cote d'ivoire and North Korea. For me, the real group of death is the one with the other African powerhouse - Ghana, Germany, Australia and Serbia. Now that's a killer group.
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Portugal is a good team but I don't think they can beat Brazil. Cristiano Ronaldo needs someone to feed him with a good pass otherwise I don't he can really score though his free kick is quite good. Australia is not strong either. I guess Germany will go through. I heard Ghana is very strong. The weather is the key factor. So, I think Ghana can get through the first round.

I bet Brazil can win if they play defensive and counter attack like they did in 2002.
 
I started digging into this a bit. While they have presented some interesting valuation and momentum type indicators, I think the whole thing falls apart when they try to simulate fixtures.

There is survivorship bias by using the world cup qualification results, which will make it hard to model and predict draws (and losses). Since each team was a 1st or second place winner, the vast majority or their stats are wins. So, they can only predict which team is a better winner.

They predict 2 draws in the group phase, WC 2006 had 11. Plus their little section on performance buckets to determine match results sounds pretty hokey.

They should be using world cup 2002 and 2006 data to model how matches play out historically, to account for how certain countries interact with each other, and combine those with momentum type indicators and their valuation metrics.

They don't seem to be using any head-to-head data, unless i missed it. Some countries have never won against another team, ever, and fixtures at the world cup are different in intensity and tendency for volatility versus qualifying or even the friendlies that contribute to rankings.

All the key results that knock-off better teams than england are through penalty shoot-outs, the penalty logic along with match prediction (all the toptier teams tie) skews everything.
 
The match prediction is pretty much crap because they use some goal production/defense based on results from group play. England scored really high because the scored a lot of goals in group play classification.
 
Germany toy with the English! Did JPM see this coming? A beautiful display of counter-attacking football by the young German side.
 
It was counterattack more than attack. When Serbia defended throughout, Germany had difficulty penetrating...
 
If the goal had been called properly, the game would have been much different. England would not have been pushing so far forward in the second half, and thus the counterattack would have been less of an issue. The call ruined the game, England pushing so far forward for 70 minutes it's inevitable that Germany would catch them eventually.

Not saying that England would hve won, but it changed the tactics of the entire game.
 
England played well for 10 minutes. Sobbing after one chance is not a good attitude. If they were strong, they shouldn't have conceded two goals easily in the first half. Germany played what they know best, after opening the score they are very difficult to beat, excellent on counter-attack, pretty strong defense.
Too many have underestimated Germany in this World Cup. Perhaps I overestimated saying they will win it all at the start, but they are force to reckon. Argentina - Germany will be an interesting clash, probably the winner will make it to the final.

The whole discussion around age of German players is false. This team played a European Cup final, losing against Spain. Also some of the core players (e.g. Klose, Podolski, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Mertesacker) started in WC '06. Adding that most players come from Bayern Munich/Werder Bremen which had good games in Europe, nice attacking teams. So there is some experience out there ...
 
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