Follow Us on Google
A GERMAN mathematician who’s correctly predicted the last three winners of the World Cup has weighed in with his pick for 2026, and it’s a surprising one.
UK-based German economist Joachim Klement has backed the Netherlands to become world champions for the first time in their history.
It’s an interesting and rogue pick from the genius, who uses an economic model to try to predict which teams are likely to win, and it’s been successful in the last three World Cups.
Klement uses four factors in his decision-making, the first being population.
Speaking to CBS he said: “If you have more people in your country, you have a bigger talent pool to tap into.”
Other News
The second of Klement’s factors is climate, he said: “You need to be able to play soccer all year round, if it’s too hot, too cold, you can’t play it and that gives you a natural disadvantage.”
His third one is wealth, he said: “It’s not enough to have just a big talent pool, you also have to have the schools, the training grounds etc, to develop them into world-class players.”
And his fourth and final one is Fifa ranking, he said: “The fourth one is the current Fifa world ranking just to get an idea of which teams have a particularly good generation of players right now.”
Klement went into his pick for 2026: “I’ve picked a team that is considered to be not amongst the favourites this time around. The Netherlands is one of those countries that persistently performs above the batting average that it should have.”
The mathematician admitted “soccer powerhouses” such as Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France and Spain all obviously have a chance.
