It's boffins versus bookies on the World Cup Rankings After all the fun and upsets of the World Cup 2010 Group stage Holland are still favourites to win according to the Reg stats expert Dr Ian McHale of Salford University. But a surprise addition to the top 3 is Uruguay – ranked 7th by the bookies, and not even in Dr McHale's rankings at the start of the tournament. “I think …
As the son of a "cloggie" I do hope the Netherlands win. That said, there are a few upstarts this year who I think have done surprising well, and I think it would be no dishonour to have them emerge the victors.
My condolences to England on your loss, but if it makes you guys feel any better, the US lost to Ghana.
"Holland (or Netherlands if you're a cloggy)"
Actually, if you're a cloggy, it's called 'Nederland'. But for some reason I do not expect you to understand, the country is called Holland again when football is concerned. You had it right all along ;-)
Excellent boffinery btw. Orange ftw!
You mean like the bad call that ruled out a perfectly valid England goal against Germany as apparently it needs to be more than a metre over the line before it counts?
By the way, I'm not trying to claim that it would have made any difference to the result (England were dire) but just pointing out that bad calls aren't restricted to one game.
Nate Silver (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ ) has been modeling cup probabilities for each elimination since the qualifiers. These chaps do baseball stats on a separate pay site and have done other sports as a sideline to their political stats. They are the folks behind the ESPN Soccer Power Index here in the US. On fivethirtyeight.com, they currently have a daily live update of the stats after each day's elimination matches.
Not advocating their views over the professor's, just another set of boffins doing the same job. They did pick USA-Ghana as even money and Germany heavy over England, though.
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