While the round tables are buzzing about whether Brazil should play with two, three or four in midfield, whether Endrick, Matheus Cunha or Igor Thiago should be the starting striker, the mass of the public wants to know something much more direct: will Brazil win the World Cup?
And what does the data say? Things were better. But wait before falling into pessimism.
The company Opta, a global reference in sports analysis, ran its supercomputer tens of thousands of times to simulate the tournament.
The result: Spain is the main favorite, with a title chance of around 16%. The team’s recent results really are robust, especially with the title of the last Eurocup (2024).
Brazil appears in this simulation with 6.8%, sixth place. The model indicates that there will be little difficulty in passing the first phase (96.9% chance of qualifying; Haiti, the team’s second opponent, has a 0.00% chance of winning the title).
To reach the semi-finals, which has not happened since 2014, Brazil has a 22.1% chance.
The Brazilian team is one of the favorites for the title, behind, in addition to Spain, France (12.7%), champion in 2018 and runner-up in 2022; from England (10.8%), current runner-up in the European Championship; from Argentina (10.2%), current world champion; and Portugal (7.2%).
In other words, Brazil is the sixth most likely to win the title (this does not mean that the team will be in sixth place). Carlo Ancelotti’s team is just ahead of Germany (5.9%) and the Netherlands (4%).
Opta simulates World Cup clashes thousands of times, estimates knockout duels and the teams’ chances of winning. The company crosses its data with bookmaker odds to calibrate the model.
Analyzing just the bookmakers, the assessment is similar, although slightly more generous with Brazil. At FanDuel, one of the main American betting platforms, Brazil is the fourth favorite, with 10.5%.
It is a different panorama from that seen in the last World Cups, in which the team appeared as the big favorite for the title. But this fact shows precisely the limitation of these predictions, since we all know that the country fell in the quarterfinals in Qatar (2022) and Russia (2018).
First, this “error” is well within the predicted range from a statistical point of view. In Qatar, even as favorites, Brazil only had a 16% chance of winning the cup. In other words, there was an 84% chance of not winning the World Cup.
Furthermore, the World Cup has a format that makes statistical predictions difficult: there are few games, in two different formats (group stage and knockout stage) and the players come from different teams and play differently in the national teams, which makes performance projections difficult.
Not to mention the nature of football: the lowest-scoring sport among the greats, in which a penalty goal or a ball hit the post separates the favorite from failure (remembering, in Croatia’s goal, in 2022, a slight deflection of the ball by defender Marquinhos took goalkeeper Alisson out of the play and Brazil qualified for the semi-finals).
With its 7% to 11% probability, Brazil is not a favorite. But it’s in the game. And, if predictions from the last World Cups overestimated Brazil’s result, why can’t they be underestimating it now in 2026?
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