Who will win the World Cup in Qatar? Certainly not Spain, not even Germany or Belgium. All the big names were eliminated, who in the groups, who in the 1/8 finals.

The classic surprises were recorded, including Croatia, the reigning world runners-up and, above all, Morocco. Predictions that fueled the World Tour immediately and continue to be made every round, especially using artificial intelligence and algorithms, try to predict who will continue on the road until December 18.

After all, “betting” has always been part of “the game”. Sport is competition, participate, but above all try to win. And so, anyone who is not the direct protagonist tries to guess what will happen, what outcome will be achieved.

The World Cup is not excluded from these predictions and the most different ways have always been used for this. In South Africa, at the 2010 World Cup, for example, the octopus Paul became famous, who managed to show the correct result of no less than eight matches, getting an incredible percentage of 100% of his predictions.

Paul, who had also been used in previous European championships with a 67% correct prediction rate, stunned the world with 100% correctly finding the results referring to Germany (seven in total), except for the result of the final between the Netherlands and Spain.

In the following years, attempts were made to repeat the “miracle” with increasingly poor results. In 2018, Akili the cat tried it, now Mystic Millie the camel, Suhail and Thuraya the pandas tried it in Qatar. All with dubious results to say the least.

🐼 Thuraya y Suhail predicen cuál será el primer equipo que avanza a cuartos 😱

¿🇳🇱 Países Bajos o Estados Unidos 🇺🇸? ¿Quién dará un paso más para levantar la Copa del Mundo? 🫣

👉 ¡Nuestros pandas tienen su favorito! 🤩#FIFAWorldCup | #Qatar2022 pic.twitter.com/jNwD7qK5fl

— beIN SPORTS Español (@ESbeINSPORTS) December 3, 2022

And so we returned to something more convincing and concrete: the calculation of probabilities through artificial intelligence, supercomputers, into which all the data of the national teams are entered, through which sophisticated algorithms are processed, based on real data and statistics.

There are those who have exposed themselves from the beginning, dictating percentages and classifications with a very high risk of error. Hardly anyone would have predicted Morocco’s trip to the quarter-finals, or Germany’s elimination from the group stage.

There are those who constantly process the available data, even changing their predictions in the face of the reality of the results, displaying an ability to ‘predict’ close to perfection.

Nielsen Holdings plc, an American company operating in over 100 countries, employing almost 50,000 people and dealing precisely with information, data and event measurement, has recently come to light.

Including, of course, the World Cup in Qatar. The American company, through “Gracenote” (the branch of the company specialized in the collection and processing of statistics) has recently processed the calculations for the upcoming quarterfinals, the results of which should be monitored very carefully, as they have already been shown to be very close to reality even before the start of the World Cup.

📈 – The UPDATED knockout phase bracket for this year's World Cup

SEVEN of the first eight knockout ties won by the favourites

🇲🇦Morocco & 🇵🇹Portugal are the final quarter-finalists

Bracket shows matches if favourite always winshttps://t.co/8J9JlxIlqD#WorldCup2022 #POR #MAR pic.twitter.com/JKHDftVSb7

— Gracenote Live (@GracenoteLive) December 6, 2022

“Nielsen”, using its own algorithm, correctly predicted six of the eight national teams in the quarter-finals, failing only with Spain and Belgium, two national teams eliminated by Croatia and Morocco. And all in the right positions on the “board”.

Thus, the interest has shifted to the new elaboration of the quarter-finals, where “Nielsen” has given its “verdict”: only Brazil, which has been declared as the winner of the World Cup from the beginning, will have an easy life against Croatia to reach in the semi-finals with 70%. For the other three pairs, they are all very close matches.

Netherlands-Argentina will tilt but slightly in favor of Messi (58%-42%), just as Portugal is slightly favored over Morocco (59%-41%), while the extreme balance will exist between England and France, with Mbappè seen as difference (51% vs 49%) vs Kane.

If everything goes well, “Nielsen” has also dictated the verdicts of two hypothetical semi-finals with Neymar who will have the best of Messi on one side and France who will fail on penalties against Portugal, on the other. Therefore, on December 18 in Doha, the final will be Brazil-Portugal, where the South American team will lift the sixth World Cup.