Statistics: Brazil is the clear favourite going into the FIFA World Cup

Footballer The 2022 World Cup kicks off on Sunday. Pixabay/Birgit - After being eliminated in the quarter-finals four years ago, the Brazilian national team is once again the clear favourite to win the FIFA World Cup. But Argentina, the Netherlands, Germany and France also have a good chance of winning the title - as shown by an international team of researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck, Ghent and Luxembourg and the Technical Universities of Dortmund and Munich. Next Sunday, 20 November, the men's football teams start the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The favourite this time is Brazil with a probability of winning of 15 percent. This is what an international team of researchers consisting of Andreas Groll and Neele Hormann (both TU Dortmund), Gunther Schauberger (TU Munich), Christophe Ley (University of Luxembourg), Hans Van Eetvelde (University of Ghent) and Achim Zeileis (University of Innsbruck) has shown with the help of machine learning. Their forecast combines several statistical models for the teams' playing strengths with information about the team structure (such as market value or number of Champions League players) as well as socio-economic factors of the country of origin (population or gross domestic product).