German soccer glory predictable - with luck

[LONDON] Brazil's World Cup was first-rate entertainment thanks to its many surprising results. For its part Breakingviews, also somewhat surprisingly, predicted that Germany would win the competition as long ago as last Christmas.

Many media pundits, and some respected financial institutions such as investment bank Goldman Sachs or global accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers, also braved the World Cup prediction challenge. They deployed a dizzying variety of sporting and non-sporting criteria. The consensus was that Brazil, the host nation, would triumph.

Breakingviews kept its focus on the numbers, shunning direct reference to the teams' sporting prowess. We looked for simple demographic and financial factors that, in logic, would produce a winner. So we rated the World Cup teams according to population, participation, fan base and squad value. Why? We assumed that good soccer teams would come from populous countries with a large base of players. And that it would help if the game had produced big stars basking in the adulation of fans. A market-derived view of player quality also seemed sensible.