Thursday March 28th, 2024
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Someone Calculated Every Team's Chances of Winning the World Cup and Egyptians Won't Be Happy

Here's a little something to put things into perspective/destroy your dreams, Egypt.

Staff Writer

Amidst the drama of Ramos-gate, vehicular designs and Captain Cuper's generous salary, no one seems to actually be discussing Egypt's chances at the World Cup in Russia. Even with a fully-fit Mo Salah, the most optimistic of football fans will admit that Egypt simply qualifying from what is a tricky Group A would be a huge achievement.

Well, we're here to squash what faint hopes anyone has of them achieving more. Sorry.

You see, a group dream-destroying nerds have calculated every participating team's chances of winning the most prestigious tournament in international football - and the results don't exactly speak highly of Egypt's chances. According to entertainment data and technology company, Gracenote, Egypt has less than 1% chance of clinching the crown and sit on par with South Korea, Nigeria, Panama, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Image: Gracenote

These cruel calculations have also predicted that Salah and co. have a 36% chance of advancing from the group stage. Said calculations are based on 1 million simulations of all the matches, with points given for each team's probability of a win, draw or defeat, based on their positions in the official FIFA rankings - in which Egypt is ranked number 40.
Image: Gracenote

This all, of course, should be taken with a big pinch of salt for several reasons. Firstly, these kinds of calculations can never take into account the kind of game-changing brilliance that someone of Mo Salah's quality can produce or the kinds of nuances that often decide the result of the match - tactics, form, etc. Secondly, though there's a very logical and mechanic system behind FIFA's official rankings, it has often been criticised for being far too rigid and taking too statistical an approach. So for example, the likes of Switzerland (6th), Poland (8th), Chile (9th) and Peru (11th) are all in the the top 20 of the latest rankings. They're decent teams, yes, but are miles away from matching up to the quality of powerhouses like Germany (1st), Brazil (2nd), Argentina (4th) and Spain (10th).

So where does that leave us? We're not statisticians, so make of it what you will, but speaking of calculations, you should definitely take this quiz, which works out which Egyptian footballer you should marry, because that's just the kind of lighthearted bullshit we do here. 

Main Image: QFM Zambia