World Cup - My Futures Picks

1-2.5% Over x.5 Penalty Shootouts (good to over 7.5 at 50c/+100)
0.5-1% Over x.5 Games go to Extra Time (good to over 10.5 at 50c/+100)
1% Winning Continent South America at 22c (good to at 30c)
1% Brazil to Win the World Cup at 8.2c (good to 15c)
0.5% Japan to Win the World Cup at 1.9c (good to 4c)

In four days the World Cup will begin, hosted jointly by the USA, Canada and Mexico. This will be the first world cup in the expanded 48 team format, with a group stage having 12 groups of 4, the top two advancing to the last 32 along with the 8 best third placed teams as ranked by points and goal difference. The European Championship has a similar format but with 24 four teams advancing to the last 16 while the World Cup had 24 teams between 1982 and 1994, with the best third placed teams format starting in 1986. Incidentally, the last time the World Cup had the best third place teams progress from the group stages was when the USA hosted the competition in 1994.

Although 32 years have passed since the World Cup was hosted in North America, the hot, humid North American summers remain, presenting its own unique challenges to the teams participating. It is not quite like European summers, which depending on where you go either tend to be humid yet cooler or hot but drier. This has all sorts of implications for team energy levels as it affects their ability to thermoregulate which in turns places pressure on high intensity strategies that rely on coordinated pressing while having less of an impact on slower styles of play.

In addition, many top players who play in Europe are coming off seasons of up to around 60 games or so while others will only have had seasons closer to about 40 games (without accounting for injuries). European teams have in the past struggled with hot, humid world cups and despite efforts to acclimatise teams to it for the Club World Cup last year, many teams still had difficulties with the heat. With advances in sports science, a lot of teams are including climatic preparations explicitly in their pre tournament training, but it is still an emerging science and I don't expect every team's preparations will go exactly according to plan first time.

International tournament football is very different from club football. In club football you have players play with each other week in week out, both competitively and on the training ground. Tactical identities under a given manager become settled relatively quickly and a lot of time is spent of refinement and adjustments. If the current players aren't the best fit, the club can always sign new players. As such, there is much more room to build up a complex system that is optimised to a high level. The bulk of modern football data analytics is built on datasets mined from regular, iterated footballing systems. International football does not have this luxury. You only have a limited number of training sessions and games together every year and a bigger proportion of those are friendlies compared to club football.

As such, optimisation looks different for international football as there is a very real scarcity of resources (I am considering time a resource here) the propagates to a deeper uncertainty of information and this uncertainty directly affects odds pricing. In this sense, I am generally agnostic on the volatility of international football but it is generally a higher entropy environment than club football, that is to say uncertainty of information rather than mere dispersion from the mean. This kind of uncertainty is what betting markets can struggle to price because its effects are often some combination of asymmetric and non linear.

What I have generally noticed are predictive factors for international success are a solid disciplined defence, high clarity of roles within the team, strong game state management and a combination of divergent attacking talent and calculated risk taking. I look for these moreso than at club football level because these are all things that don't require meticulous week by week preparation to optimise. It is easier to raise your defensive floor than it is to raise your attacking floor as reactivity is not as much of a liability in defence compared to attack and it can even be an asset under the right circumstances. Where a lot of international teams with talented players tend to underperform is where there roles on the pitch aren't clearly defined and so look like less than the sum of their parts. England traditionally has struggled with this as their club culture has a large diversity of tactical systems but they're disparate, so there's no unifying tradition as has been the case historically with teams like Germany and Italy.

Where things can very subtly go wrong (or right) is game state management. The pressures of international football are larger than club football due to the tournaments not being every year and for the World Cup in particular, the pressures are enormous. Teams react very differently to changes in the game in the last half hour compared to club football. One mistake doesn't take you out of the competition for that year, it takes you out of the competition for four years. For many players, there either won't be a next world cup or if there will the squad will have aged and new quality will not necessarily replace old. When the stakes are that higher, there is a heightened risk aversion that you don't see even in the Champions League. This is compounded by the competition being after season's end with players you don't often play with in weather that may be very different to what you're used to. I've very often seen two teams trade blows during normal time but after a certain point neither team quite has enough in the tank to land a knockout punch. Those are exactly the kind of games that have a heightened chance to go to extra time and subsequently penalties.

Now I am not saying that two teams who are level will automatically shut up shop and play for penalties, but there are very real risks to misreading the current state of the game. On one hand, you may manage the game with a higher degree of emotional volatility than would be advantageous and that can lead to your opponent scoring a crucial goal. This has been Brazil's problem over the last two decades, as it had a direct hand in their exit against the Dutch in 2010 and against Croatia in 2022. The other risk is that you play too passively and allow your opponent to mould the game in a more advantageous direction for them. England have been a strong example of this, with their loss to Italy on penalties in the Euro 2020 final in front of home fans being a very notable instance. Teams that exhibit elite game state management are often strong candidates for overperformance. Croatia when their midfield had a core of Modrić, Rakitić and Brozović at their peak were a strong example of this as they were able to hold their own against teams with more overall talent on the pitch because they were able to selectively manage and reset game tempo under stress.

So this brings me to my picks. My backtesting has the median expected number of penalty shootouts for a tournament with last 16 at 3.5 (that is to say, a coin flip as to whether it is at least 4 or not and number of games go to extra time at 5.5. The only real time penalty shootouts were a bit less likely was during the golden and silver goal eras, which though brief are long gone now. I generally discount the third place playoff because teams tend to play with a bit more freedom when they're no longer in contention to win the World Cup, so the number of effective knockout games slightly more than doubles in the new format. For new format with a last 32, I have the median number of penalty shootouts at 7.5 and the median number of games go to extra time at 11.5. I would be hesitant about taking it that high though because I have a little more confidence in games to go to penalties once they reach extra time so that is why I have the proportion of bankroll on penalties a little higher.

You may have to shop around for these props, so that's why I quoted it as over x.5. BetOnline has them but they have moved their lines already. I still see them as good value but I think the easy part of that move has already played out. If you have access to the Irish and English bookmakers you will probably get better odds but some might not add them until shortly before the tournament starts. Kalshi has props for number of penalty shootouts at last 32, last 16 and quarter finals but I don't like that to be honest. Those are markets so specific that I've never seen a bookmaker add them. Liquidity looks very patchy too so I wouldn't bank on getting a good price on those. Polymarket has not added penalty shootouts props and at this stage I would be very surprised if they do.

Despite European teams taking measures to adapt to North American weather, I still have South American teams to have an edge in this tournament. I have structural concerns about the big European teams which I will briefly allude to here. Spain are priced at favourites and I'm not sure they provide any compelling value. I think their attacking output is going to have a higher dependence on Lamine Yamal than they would like. He has had some fitness issues and if he's not firing on all cylinders Spain risk reverting back to their profile under Luis Enrique, possession dominant but low shot conversion. They really don't have much attacking depth beyond Yamal and Williams so despite them overall having a very coherent team, I do see them as being particularly vulnerable to a relatively minor attacking underperformance.

France are priced very close to Spain to the extent they are effectively co favourites. They have a ridiculous amount of talent but I have big concerns over Deschamps announcing he will depart after the World Cup. This means his authority has a limited time horizon. This is not necessarily critical but France already has an issue with Mbappé's workrate, which has been a source of tension both at PSG and Real Madrid. The question has drifted from will Mbappé take on the same defensive duties as the rest of the team to how does the team best accommodate Mbappé? I don't expect them to struggle when they have a clear talent edge over their opponents, but in a tight knockout stage game against a team who knows how to keep things tight, that's where Mbappé's centrality to the French team may become a large vulnerability. Long term I do expect France to perform well, but with the new régime still a matter of speculation it does introduce a lack of clarity to the squad that makes this tournament a potential banana skin for them. This doesn't mean they can't win, but it does mean that I am sceptical of their current market pricing represents value.

England under Thomas Tuchel is implementing a decidedly club level system to an international squad. As I have alluded to before, England has traditionally struggled to integrate players from different domestic tactical systems and make them look coherent at international level. Tuchel is a Champions League winner with Chelsea but he is not the first Champions League winning manager to attempt to implement a coherent system for England; Fabio Capello was a Champions League winner with AC Milan and won La Liga with Real Madrid the same year he was appointed as England manager; they went out 4-1 to Germany at the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup (though Frank Lampard had an infamous goal not stand which was the final straw that led to extra assistance for the officiating team, culminating eventually int he modern VAR era). Tuchel has raised eyebrows with his omissions from the England squad, notably leaving Harry Maguire, Trent Alexander Arnold and Phil Foden at home. Some point to it as a sign that Tuchel is breaking the tradition of loyalty to names, but he would not be the first to attempt this. Capello's squad selection for 2010 had some very notable omissions too. My overwhelming concern with Tuchel is that he is trying to fit the players to his system, rather than the system to his players. At club level his teams were very effective at making the team very tight defensively but often struggled to break down tight defensive units. England was already strong defensively under Southgate. Cutting edge in attack is generally where they struggled and if Tuchel does not solve that, then England run the same risk of possession without incision.

Portugal have a strong core with Bruno Fernandes having broken the English assist record and Vitinha having won the Champions League. The big concern for them is Ronaldo. He is nowhere near his physical peak and if he doesn't deliver, Roberto Martinez will have to make a call of whether or not to substitute or even bench Ronaldo. If he doesn't, Portugal also present a common risk of underperformance - possession dominant, but lacking cutting edge.

Brazil is the major uncertainty of the tournament. Generally Brazil's lack of tempering the volatility of the game state has been a real Achilles heel for them and they tend to be major favourites despite that. This tournament is unusual in that they're no longer among the main favourites. When Brazil click they normally tend to be unfancied prior to that but as we know, a team can be unfancied for a long time before they get it right. What Brazil's chances of success ultimately come down to is their ability to manage high pressure moments of the game and that is exactly what Carlo Ancelotti's biggest edge is. He has won the Champions League five times as a manager and the biggest features of his successful AC Milan and Real Madrid teams were their ability not to panic under pressure and to modulate the pace of the game to suit their strengths. Ancelotti is not a tactical revolutionary who builds complex systems, he is a manager who brings clarity and calm and that is why he has been so effective at managing elite level squads. I would not be surprised to see Brazil go behind during this tournament - how Brazil react to doing so and seeing out leads late in the game will ultimately be telling if Ancelotti's approach is making the critical difference.

Finally, Japan because I'm about to run out of space. I have South American team to win the World Cup due to Brazil and a basket of other teams I think are undervalued but Japan is the main source of value I see in Asia. They have a coherent system that is capable of hitting big teams where it hurts and they come from a climate with hot, humid summers so I don't expect acclimatisation issues from them. Japan is a potential cash out position at some point but right now I do have them as a team that has been knocking on the door of a serious run for a while and I would not be surprised if this is the tournament where they manage to make it click.