World Cup predictions: how well have you been doing?

Let’s be honest, how many of you predicted that Brazil would only manage to beat North Korea by two goals to one? For those playing the SportGuru World Cup prediction game, the answer is just 3.3%. Other games have thrown up a similarly low success rate, so with the second round of group games kicking off this evening when South Africa take on Uruguay, now might be the time to reappraise your prediction strategy. 

It’s hard to ignore the fact that goals have been hard to come by so far in this tournament. In 2006, 41 goals were scored in the opening sixteen games (an average of 2.56 goals a game); in 2002 it was 46 goals (2.88 goals a game); in 1998 it was 37 from 16 (2.31). So far in 2010 there have been just 23 goals in 14 games – an average of just 1.64 goals per game, something which appears to have tripped up a lot of predictions.

For example, only 3.0% predicted the Uruguay vs. France game would end goalless, whilst just 4.5% expected Argentina to beat Nigeria by a solitary goal. The opening Group G game between Portugal and the Ivory Coast yesterday was a major disappointment for those who had anticipated it to be the most exciting of the first round of games, and just 1.3% predicted the eventual stalemate in Port Elizabeth.

So has this influenced the picks for the second round of games? The answer would appear to be ‘yes’, with low scoring predictions now apparently the order of the day. In this evening’s game a whopping 33.7% have backed a 1-1 result, whilst in the other fixture in Group A between France and Mexico, 24.8% have gone for the same 1-1 scoreline. There is even some caution in backing the free scoring Germans, with 31.0% going for a modest 2-0 win for Joachim Low’s side against Serbia.

“And what of England?”, I hear you ask. Pre-tournament optimism clearly took its hold ahead of the USA game, with 85.5% predicting some form of England victory and just 6.1% correctly guessing the actual 1-1 scoreline. In spite of the inspid performance in Rustenburg, and probably in no small part due to Algeria’s poor showing against Slovenia, confidence in Fabio Capello’s men remains intact with 33.8 % going for a 2-0 win on Friday, and 27.4% plumping for a 3-0 victory.

So what are your predictions? If you haven’t already joined our game and think you can make up on a bit of lost ground, here are the details of how you can join the SportGuru tournament and enter The Football Blog pool, currently being led by Palsey with WillyG in close pursuit in second place. There is a long way to go yet however, and as has been proved so far, this tournament is far from easy to predict.

June 16, 2010