The use of quantitative techniques in sports has spread from the US and is now employed by leading sports franchises in Europe. With the knowledge that the FIFA Football World Cup tournament is to begin in South Africa in three weeks, I have been on the lookout for any predictions of the performance of various teams. However, I have been completely surprised by the prediction mentioned here by J P Morgan that England would be the world soccer champions at the tournament in South Africa.
The reason for my surprise comes not only from my general distrust of the quant technology that many financial services firms have too much faith in, but more especially because of a book that I read which shows that England perform in excess of what their fair expectation should be. Apart from this book, I am also skeptical of the prediction because the most persuasive algorithm that I have read about is Nate Silver's Soccer Power Index developed for ESPN.
In a while rival algorithms will be published and their conclusions stated but I trust the SPI most because while portions of its are not available for public scrutiny, Nate Silver explains the logic behind it elaborately and it suggests that England will do well but is still well behind a number of playing countries. In other words, I like English league soccer but the national team is often overrated and I am unconvinced that the team is good enough to win the cup in July 2010.
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