With the 2022 FIFA World Cup starting soon, football fans all over the world are preparing to cheer for their favorite countries.

France, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain are all strong contenders and debate can be fierce when discussing which is the better team.

It is difficult to compare the skills of individual players, much less of entire teams: rising stars and fresh blood means new opportunities, but older players bring more experience to the table and some may be looking to go out with a bang in possibly their last world cup.

However, Lloyd built a model and used it to successfully predict the 2014 and 2018 world cup champions, and they’ve applied it to this year’s world cup to figure out who will take the trophy. This model ranks each team based on the collective insurable value of their players. The assessment of each insurable value is based on each player’s income, taking into account various metrics such as wages, sponsorships, age and on-field position. Using this ranking system, the tournament was simulated according to the figure below:

As can be seen from the results, England is expected to defeat Brazil in the finals to win their second title, closely followed by Argentina and Spain. Lloyd’s system ranks France as being slightly stronger than Brazil, but unfortunate enough to be eliminated by the predicted champion.

What’s interesting is that this model and research were designed to emphasize the need for athletes of all levels, regardless of sport, to consider their insurance coverage, and turned out to be surprisingly accurate in predicting the actual performance of each team.

Click here to read Lloyd’s full article.