Argentina is the favorite to win the FIFA World Cup 2022 finals. Argentina to win World Cup says, economist. England is expected to lose the match against them, according to predictions made by an economist who correctly predicted the winners of the tournament in 2014 and 2018. Joachim Klement is an investment analyst at an investment banking firm.
Argentina to win World Cup says, economist
In September, before the World Cup even started in Qatar, he predicted how it would turn out. But he said he “sweated a lot” while watching the nerve-wracking World Cup group stage game between Saudi Arabia and Argentina, which Saudi Arabia won, leaving football fans worldwide shocked.
The economist uses a four-part model to make these kinds of predictions: GDP per person, population size, culture, and climate. This model says that the best countries are warmer ones where football can be played all year long, have a large population that likes football, and have a high GDP per person.
China, India, and the Netherlands are the three countries most different from the economist’s model. Klement first said that England would lose to Argentina in September. On that note, he said that the only way for Argentina to win the coveted FIFA trophy for the first time in 36 years would be to beat Spain in the semi-final game.
In his note, the economist also said that the current World Cup has been harder to predict than previous ones because it is happening in the winter. Thus, he said that the value of all the players on a team hadn’t been as good a way to predict winners as looking at the factors that led to the team’s success.
Official Statements
“The Indians have decided to play cricket, God knows why, and the Chinese for some strange reason have really caught up on that,” Klement said, speaking to Bloomberg.
He said that considering the Netherlands’ relatively small population, it has been “incredibly successful at football.”
The investment analyst did not intend to develop this working prediction model. He intended to take a jibe at economists who claim to “predict absolutely everything” by doing so.
“Also, I’m a bit cautious about using the collective value of players because the Premier League has so much more money at its disposal and can pay so much more for players,” Klement said.
“Therefore, the good news for England fans is England will make it into the final. The bad news is they’re going to lose this one.”