THE POWER RANK

3 steps to predicting the Women’s World Cup 2023

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You want to bet on the World Cup even though you don’t follow women’s soccer. It isn’t easy with the media coverage that focuses on the United States but has less on other contenders.

Let’s look at the three step process I’ve developed to get an overview of the World Cup and identify a futures bet. It will involve analytics on the team level and wisdom of crowds on the player level.

Almost always, women get less than the men in sports. However, I will highlight one way in which women get an edge on the men. Let’s get started.

1 – World Women’s Rankings – For a quant like myself, I always start with a data driven approach.

Based on match results in top international competition since the last World Cup in 2019, I ranked teams by taking margin of victory and adjusting for strength of schedule (referred to as TPR for The Power Rank below). I did the same for xG, or expected goals based on shot quality, although the data was limited to the last World Cup and European Championship.

These were the results I shared in 5-Nuggets that had the United States as the favorite with England and France as strong contenders. I debated expanding this calculation and including friendly matches. However, injuries and player absences suggested that more data would only be so useful.

Except for Germany and Sweden, all the top contenders are dealing with injuries. For example:

  • Mallory Swanson, United States, 32 goals in 88 caps, knee.
  • Marie-Antoinette Katoto, France, 108 goals in 113 matches with club PSG, knee.
  • Vivianne Miedema, Netherlands, 95 goals in 115 caps, knee.

While the rankings suggest value in France at 11-1, the injury to Katoto should make one cautious about this bet. With these changing rosters, it is more important to expand the set of metrics than make any one more accurate.

2 – FIFA Rankings – Women almost always get worse treatment than men in sports. The lone exception is the FIFA rankings.

While both the men and women use an Elo type updating, the women’s rankings uses goals and goal difference in the calculation. Even though this data enhances the accuracy of rankings, the men’s rankings do not use it.

The men’s rankings have Germany as the 14th best team in the world, behind the United States at 11th. That’s more of a joke than giving $25M per year to an NFL running back. In contrast, the women’s FIFA rankings actually make sense.

Let’s look at the top 10 teams by the markets to win the World Cup and compare with the three different rankings I’ve discussed. The market data is from FanDuel as of Wednesday morning.

  • United States +240 (1st TPR, 1st FIFA, 1st xG)
  • England +430 (2nd TPR, 4th FIFA, 3rd xG)
  • Spain +550 (11th TPR, 6th FIFA, 5th xG)
  • Germany +750 (3rd TPR, 2nd FIFA, 4th xG)
  • Australia +900 with home advantage (12th TPR, 10th FIFA, 14th xG)
  • France +1100 (5th TPR, 5th FIFA, 2nd xG)
  • Sweden +1800 (6th TPR, 3rd FIFA, 6th xG)
  • Netherlands +2300 (4th TPR, 9th FIFA, 11th xG)
  • Brazil +3200 (7th TPR, 8th FIFA, 12th xG)
  • Canada +3400 (8th TPR, 7th FIFA, 8th xG)

A team that stands out is Sweden, as they have the 7th best odds to win but have higher rankings by the numbers.

3 – Player rankings – With all the injuries to top teams, it’s also important to look at the top players for each team. Taking a wisdom of crowds approach, let’s look at a few different sources:

In addition, the two rankings have Sam Kerr of Australia as the top player. She will have home advantage in this World Cup.

These player lists also show a strong set of core players for Sweden:

  • Fridolina Rolfo – full back for Barcelona but plays a more attacking role for Sweden (25 goals in 78 caps).
  • Kosovare Asllani – a midfielder and play making #10 that plays for AC Milan.
  • Stina Blackstenius – a striker for Arsenal that has 28 goals in 90 caps for Sweden.

Along with the lack of injured players, these metrics suggest value in Sweden at 18-1 to win the World Cup (available on FanDuel).

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Copa America win probabilities for 2016 at the knock out stage

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winprob_copa2016_knockout

These Copa America win probabilities are based on my international soccer/football rankings that include competition since the start of 2012.

The calculations weight games by their importance. For example, a World Cup match is worth four times a friendly.

However, the rankings do not weight recent games more. This has interesting consequences for the above win probabilities.

United States

For example, the United States ranks 13th in my world rankings. The largest contribution comes from the 2014 World Cup in which they emerged from a group of death to make the knock out stage.

Other predictive rankings such as eloratings.net tend to weight recent matches more. With their struggles in last year’s Gold Cup, the United States ranks 22nd by this metric.

Still, the United States has a 16% chance to win the Copa America. They will enjoy home advantage in each of their matches, worth 0.56 goals.

Also, it looked like Colombia did the United States a favor when they lost Costa Rica. The United States won the group on goal differential and most likely avoided Brazil in the first knock out game.

Then Brazil lost to Peru 1-0 when the referee missed a blatant hand ball goal. Brazil fails to advance from the group, and Peru, 27th by my rankings, wins the group.

I ran the numbers for the situation in which the United States finished second to Colombia in the group. This means they play Peru and Chile/Mexico instead of Ecuador and Argentina. The United States had a 21% win probability, larger than their 16% chance.

Partial home advantage for Mexico

I’ve given Mexico a half home advantage, since El Tri always gets strong support from their fans on American soil. However, they only have a 10% chance to win.

Mexico faces a tough road through Chile and Colombia, the seventh and fourth ranked teams by my numbers, to make the final. Then they most likely face top ranked Argentina in the final.

Argentina

Argentina has the highest win probability at 32%. However, this is less than the about 58% chance (-140 as of Thursday morning) given by the futures market.

Note that superstar Lionel Messi has yet to start a match in this tournament because of an injury. He did score three goals as a reserve against Panama.

Win probabilities for the 2015 Gold Cup

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Screen Shot 2015-07-06 at 11.37.32 AMCan the United States win the 2015 Gold Cup?

Winning the Gold Cup means more than than just bragging rights over rival Mexico. With the win, the United States qualifies for the Confederations Cup in 2017, a key tune up tournament for the World Cup in 2018.

If another team wins the Gold Cup, they play a one game playoff against the United States, winner of the 2013 Gold Cup. The winner of this playoff represents North America at the Confederations Cup.

To determine win probabilities for the Gold Cup, I combined three different estimates into an ensemble prediction. Two came from my own calculations that rank international teams on offense and defense (see the bottom of this article), and a third came from the markets.

goldcup2015

The Gold Cup usually comes down to the United States and Mexico, but Costa Rica has emerged as a solid third team that made the final 16 of the World Cup last summer.

Let’s look at these three top contenders. The offense and defense rankings come from The Power Rank algorithm and use international matches since January 1st, 2011.

United States

12th offense, 27th defense

The United States looked fantastic in beating Germany in a friendly last month, and they also beat the Netherlands in another friendly. Both matches took place on European soil.

They need to play well at the start of the Gold Cup as their group has Honduras and Panama, two top 50 teams in my world soccer/football rankings. Meanwhile, Mexico has the dregs of CONCACAF (Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, all ranked lower than 80th) in their group.

Coach Jurgen Klinsmann left central defender Matt Besler, who started every game of last year’s World Cup, off the Gold Cup roster. John Brooks will most likely start, and let’s hope they can improve a defense that has ranked 27th in the world over the last 4 years.

Mexico

11th offense, 9th defense

By the numbers, Mexico has a slight edge on the United States in my rankings. They don’t have the largest win probability though since the United States will enjoy home field advantage.

I’m not 100% certain the United States should get the full .59 goals for home field. If the United States and Mexico meet in Philadelphia for the final, there will be plenty of Mexican fans wearing green in attendance.

In my ensemble calculations, the market predictions most likely account for the semi-neutral type final in Philadelphia. They gave United States a 38% win probability with Mexico at 36%. The gap was bigger in my two calculations.

For Mexico, striker Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez broke his collar bone and will miss the Gold Cup. He scored 9 goals in 33 matches for Real Madrid last season.

Costa Rica

40th offense, 10th defense

Costa Rica had an amazing World Cup last summer. In winning their group, they sent Italy and England home before the knock out stage. Then they beat Greece to advance to the Round of 16.

Costa Rica relies on its defense, which is ranked 10th in the world over the last 4 seasons. They face a road game against Canada in Toronto in the group stage, but they should win their group before most likely playing the United States in the semi-final.

List of win probabilities for the 2015 Gold Cup

1. United States, 39.1%.
2. Mexico, 33.6%.
3. Costa Rica, 11.7%.
4. Panama, 4.7%.
5. Honduras, 4.7%.
6. Jamaica, 2.3%.
7. Guatemala, 1.8%.
8. Canada, 1.4%.
9. El Salvador, 0.9%.
10. Trinidad and Tobago, 0.7%.
11. Haiti, 0.1%.
12. Cuba, 0.1%.

Television Interview on Ronan Farrow Daily

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me_ronan_mauriceRonan Farrow interviewed me and Maurice Edu about the World Cup on his MSNBC show yesterday.

I was pumped to meet both the host and one of the best soccer players in the United States. However, there’s not much contact when they film you from a remote location.

To do the interview, I went to a studio in my home town of Ann Arbor. A nice guy Tony set everything up.

From a remote location, I could only hear Ronan and Maurice in my earpiece. I couldn’t see them or what appeared on television.

Still, it was fun. We talked World Cup, the United States’ chances against Belgium in the Round of 16 and how numbers affect the psychology of players.

To view the interview, click here. If you’re viewing on Tuesday, July 1, it should be the main video under “Betting on the World Cup.” Otherwise, you might have to scroll through the videos on the right.

New international football / soccer rankings show recent form of nations

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world_soccer_June19_2014The FIFA rankings suck. Not only do they poorly predict the outcome of matches, but you have to wait a month for updates.

The Power Rank international football / soccer rankings do better. The ranking algorithm considers margin of victory in adjusting for schedule strength in international soccer. As an academic study has shown, using margin of victory is critical in making predictions.

In addition, the international rankings are now updated daily.

This constant updating is interesting during the World Cup. My rankings use a 4 year window of matches and weight matches by their importance.

  • World Cup Finals: 4.
  • World Cup Qualifiers, Confederations Cup, Continental Finals: 3.
  • Continental Qualifiers, 2.
  • Friendlies, 1.

Since we’re in the middle of a World Cup, the rankings add important matches each day while dropping results from the previous World Cup. This leads to some interesting changes for certain teams.

Spain and the Netherlands

The Netherlands dominated Spain in a 5-1 win last week. This dropped an aging Spain team down to 6th. The FIFA rankings still have Spain as the top team.

The Dutch have risen to 4th. It mystifies me why more people didn’t think this traditional power could win this World Cup.

Germany and Brazil

While most other respectable rankings have Brazil on top, the weighting of matches in The Power Rank vaults Germany ahead of Brazil.

Germany has played well in the last two World Cups. In 2010, they dominated Argentina in a 4-0 rout. Just last week, they beat Portugal, another top 10 team, by the same margin.

With no weighting, Brazil would be the top team in The Power Rank.

United States and Ghana

The Yanks are 18th currently, one spot above the Ghana squad they just beat.

The United States won the game because of two great finishes by Clint Dempsey and John Brooks. However, between these two goals, Ghana dominated possession and scoring opportunities. They were the better team.

Colombia and Chile

These two South American teams are in the top 10. Colombia is ranked higher at 5th, but Chile is not far behind at 7th.

From this World Cup, the Colombia looks like the better team. They continue to score goals despite the absence of Radamel Falcao, their leading scorer in qualifying.

Moreover, my aggregated win probabilities before the World Cup gave Colombia an almost 4% chance to win it all. Chile only had a 1.9% chance.

Belgium and France

Belgium has generated much chatter as a dark horse World Cup champion. Young players like Eden Hazard have dazzled on the pitch at this World Cup.

However, their performance over the last 4 years ranks them 13th in The Power Rank. That puts them lower than France (9th), a team no has talked about as World Cup champion. (Of course, France is missing star winger Frank Ribery for this World Cup.)

Belgium’s play as a team does not make me believe they will contend for the World Cup title. My aggregated win probabilities before the tourney agree with this assessment. Belgium had the 11th highest win probability at 2.3%.

Rankings of World Cup teams

Here are rankings of the 32 World Cup teams that consider matches from June 20, 2010 through June 19, 2014. The record gives wins, losses and ties over the past 4 years. The rating gives an expected margin of victory against an average international team.

1. Germany, (37-7-11), 2.52
2. Brazil, (40-9-12), 2.28
3. Argentina, (32-8-15), 2.15
4. Netherlands, (33-9-11), 2.09
5. Colombia, (24-8-11), 2.09
6. Spain, (45-8-8), 2.05
7. Chile, (29-17-9), 1.69
8. Uruguay, (28-14-15), 1.69
9. France, (28-11-12), 1.59
10. Portugal, (26-9-13), 1.54
11. Ecuador, (17-14-15), 1.48
12. Mexico, (35-18-17), 1.48
13. Belgium, (22-8-12), 1.44
14. England, (25-8-14), 1.43
15. Ivory Coast, (31-7-9), 1.42
16. Italy, (22-12-21), 1.40
17. Ghana, (30-15-14), 1.29
18. United States, (37-17-12), 1.25
19. Russia, (24-6-13), 1.25
21. Switzerland, (20-7-12), 1.23
23. Croatia, (24-10-11), 1.16
24. Nigeria, (29-11-21), 1.11
27. Japan, (33-12-13), 1.07
28. Bosnia-Herzegovina, (21-14-7), 1.03
30. Costa Rica, (25-23-19), 0.95
32. Greece, (24-8-16), 0.91
34. Australia, (26-16-11), 0.87
35. Iran, (30-8-16), 0.85
38. South Korea, (24-17-12), 0.80
43. Honduras, (22-24-18), 0.75
50. Cameroon, (16-13-12), 0.60
53. Algeria, (19-10-6), 0.56

For all teams, click here.

Predictions

The Power Rank also provides predictions for each match and stages of the competition, both of which are update nightly.

These predictions use a different set of rankings that consider a 12 year window of games. Research as shown that these calculations are as accurate in predicting match outcomes as using a 4 year window.