Klement's World Cup Prediction Model: Can the Netherlands Win?

Paul the Octopus needed only a glass tank and a flag to become a World Cup legend. Joachim Klement needed data, code and a sense of mischief – and has ended up with a perfect record the octopus could only dream of.

The German economist, now based in the UK, has built a forecasting model that has correctly picked the last three World Cup winners: Germany in 2014, France in 2018 and Argentina in 2022. All of them, nailed in advance.

Now the numbers point in a new direction. To the Netherlands.

If the Dutch lift the trophy in July, Klement’s streak will stretch to four out of four and a once tongue‑in‑cheek experiment will have morphed into something far more uncomfortable for its creator.

From joke to “guru”

Klement never set out to become football’s spreadsheet oracle. “This started as an exercise in showing the world a hubris of economists who think they can forecast stuff that they actually have no clue about,” he says. The idea was simple: build a model, show its limitations, puncture the myth that everything can be predicted.

Then Germany, his home nation, won in 2014. The model had said they would.

So he ran it again for 2018, half expecting the numbers to come crashing down and prove his point. France came out on top. Four years later, Argentina. Three tournaments, three champions, one increasingly uneasy economist.

“Because I was right three times in a row, people now think that this model is unbeatable and that I obviously will have to be right as well next time,” he says. “And now it's become an exercise in how, if you're lucky often enough, people will think you're a guru.”

A map of the whole tournament

This isn’t just a one‑line tip sheet. Klement’s model runs through the entire 48‑team tournament, spitting out a full bracket: shocks, exits, deep runs.

Japan, for instance, are projected to stun Brazil in the second round. Scotland, by contrast, are forecast to fall at the group stage.

England’s path runs deeper. The numbers send them to the semi‑finals, only to be removed by Portugal – a painful echo of 2006. The model doesn’t go as far as scripting another penalty shootout, but the implication hangs there for anyone who remembers Cristiano Ronaldo’s wink and England’s familiar collapse.

At the top of the tree, though, sit the Netherlands. If they go all the way, they will complete a sequence that already feels statistically outrageous.

The science – and the coin toss

Klement is the first to explain why this shouldn’t work as well as it has.

World Cup success does lean on what he calls “systemic” factors: population size, national wealth, climate, Fifa world rankings. These are the building blocks of his model, the hard edges that shape the probabilities.

But they only carry you so far.

“The other 50% is luck,” he says. “Every match – especially when you have these high-quality teams playing against each other that are very similar in skills and quality – it really depends on the form of the day, a ref call, a piece of luck in the sense of hitting the post versus the ball going in. Things like that are completely unpredictable.”

His warning is clear: treat the forecast as a clever guide, not a guarantee. The problem is, three straight hits make people forget the disclaimer.

A distraction in a difficult year

Away from World Cups, Klement is a strategist at investment bank Panmure Liberum. His day job is to make sense of markets, not group stages.

Every four years, the tournament gives him something else to chew on. “In particular in 2026, when there are so many crises, wars and things going on, it is something that makes me feel good and hopefully the readers feel good and gives them a little bit of a distraction from all the kind of bad stuff that is going on in the world,” he says.

What began as a side project has become a ritual – and a small escape. As each edition approaches, he updates the data, reruns the simulations, and publishes a forecast that now travels far beyond the world of finance.

With that reach comes pressure.

Office bets and Dutch nerves

Inside the bank, the model has become office currency. Colleagues lean over desks with questions that would make most economists blink.

How does Xavi Simons’ ACL injury affect the probabilities for the Netherlands? What does an injury to a Dutch Tottenham midfielder do to a country’s World Cup odds?

Klement fields it all, then repeats his caveats. The model is not magic. It does not see the future. It cannot price in every twist of form, every injury, every refereeing decision.

Still, people are backing it with real money.

“I've got several colleagues who bet some money on the Netherlands in response to me publishing that note,” he says. It’s said with a smile, but there’s a hint of concern there too.

So what happens if the Dutch crash out early and the streak finally dies?

“If the Netherlands get eliminated from the World Cup,” he says, “I think the next day I have to work from home.”

Four tournaments in, the economist who set out to prove the limits of prediction now finds himself trapped by its illusion. The model has one more shot at perfection. The question is no longer whether you can forecast a World Cup.

It’s whether the Netherlands can keep an unlikely oracle’s reputation alive.