Financial institutions?! Bah humbug! Don’t get me started! If all their combined talents managed to get us into this credit crunch pickle that we currently find ourselves in, why on earth should we trust anything they say about football?
Well, if following football for the past 25 years has taught me anything, it’s that I’ll believe what I want to believe. Which probably accounts for some of my dire betting outcomes in the past – ignoring reason in favour of blind faith is not as sound a basis to run a betting P&L account as it is to establishing a religion. So whilst England stumbled to a tedious 1 – 0 win over Paraguay in Germany 2006’s group stages, I still believed we were the world’s premier side, and threw money at the problem accordingly.
But South Africa 2010 is different. Because I am going to use reason this time around! The kind of reason that those smart chaps in the City use to manage their financial investments. A couple of eggheads at JP Morgan, the financial services firm, have applied the “Quant” methodology, that they usually use for evaluating investment opportunities, to the World Cup. Instead of applying data about stock performance, they are instead inserting information regarding FIFA rankings, historical results and bookmakers’ odds into their model, in order to identify a champion.
After much whizzing and whirring, their spreadsheet eventually spat out a winner. And this time, it is a winner that I know I can back with reason, rather than blind fingers-crossed-it’s-been-44-years-so-it-will-happen-again-one-day hope. So who is JP Morgan’s Quant Analysis’ Predicted Winner? England, of course! By all accounts, we’ll beat Spain in the final. Frankly, know that we know this, why bother even playing the tournament at all? Why not just hand over the trophy to Rio right now, and we’ll all save a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted in front of the television.
So there you have it – a good, honest, solid reason to back England! And the advice isn’t coming from me – it’s coming from the City! What could possibly go wrong?!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/18/england-win-world-cup-jp-morgan
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