World Cup is very difficult, if impossible to predict. For example, I was watching Slovakia-Italy yesterday, and in around 95 minute, Italia had a good chance t

World Cup is very difficult, if impossible to predict. For example, I was watching Slovakia-Italy yesterday, and in around 95 minute, Italia had a good chance to equalize to 3:3, it was a matter if the player will hit the ball correctly - I don't know how something like that could be predicted. Moreover, no one expected that Slovakia will play better than in their previous matches, and Italy will play worse than in their previous matches. One possible factor (for Slovakia) could be that the coach and players were angry at Slovak media, which all blamed them mercilessly for a poor performance in the previous two matches - and that I think had more influence on the outcome than any previous math statistics about those two teams. They wanted to show that the media were incorrect and that added an extra motivation. Where I think this math approach can work is in the leagues, where the same teams play against each other regularly.