Joachim Klement's Bold Prediction for World Cup Champions
Paul the Octopus needed only a tank, two boxes and a dead mussel to become a World Cup celebrity. Joachim Klement needed an economist’s toolkit, a spreadsheet, and a sense of mischief.
Back in 2014, the German analyst built a model to mock the idea that economists can forecast anything with certainty. Instead, he stumbled into a streak that has outlived Paul, outlasted most betting systems, and now hangs over this summer’s World Cup like a quiet dare: can he really make it four in a row?
His latest call is bold. The Netherlands to be world champions.
An economist’s “joke” that stopped being funny
Klement, who has lived in the UK for a decade and works as a strategist at investment bank Panmure Liberum, never meant to become football’s numbers guru.
“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, publish a forecast, and let reality expose the limits of the data.
Instead, reality played along.
- Germany in 2014.
- France in 2018.
- Argentina in 2022.
Three tournaments, three correct champions. What began as a tongue‑in‑cheek demonstration has turned into a spotless record that even Paul the Octopus never matched. Paul got Germany’s results right in 2010 and became an instant icon. Klement has been perfect on the ultimate question: who lifts the trophy?
“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. The irony isn’t lost on him. The sceptic has become the oracle.
Inside the model: power, climate and cold numbers
Strip away the mystique and the machinery is, on the surface, fairly orthodox. Klement feeds in what he calls “systemic” factors: national population, wealth, climate, Fifa world rankings. The big structural levers that shape a country’s footballing ceiling.
Those ingredients give his model a broad map of the 48‑team tournament. It doesn’t just spit out a winner; it sketches the whole journey. According to his latest run, Japan spring a shock against Brazil in the second round. Scotland do not make it out of the group. England grind their way to the semi‑finals, only to be knocked out by Portugal – a painful echo of 2006, even if the model refuses to go as far as predicting “penalties, again”.
At the top of the tree sit the Dutch, poised in his numbers to become the fourth straight champion his forecasts have identified correctly. If they lift the trophy in July, Klement’s statistical prophecy reaches the kind of territory that makes bookmakers nervous and colleagues suddenly very interested in your spreadsheets.
Yet he insists the model only ever tells half the story.
“The other 50% is luck,” he says. And that is where the economist in him digs his heels in.
The limits of prophecy
Klement is adamant: football is not an equation to be solved. Especially not at the sharp end of a World Cup, where the margins shrink to a single touch.
“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,” he explains. “Things like that are completely unpredictable.”
That tension sits at the heart of his growing reputation. The more often he is right, the more people want to believe the model is something it is not. Each correct champion only tightens the grip of the myth.
His forecast, published every four years, now attracts more attention with each tournament. The readership has grown. So has the pressure. For Klement, a self-described “pessimist”, the project is supposed to be a playful diversion from a world heavy with bad news.
“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.
The distraction, though, has consequences.
Office bets and Dutch nerves
Inside Panmure Liberum, the model is no longer an abstract curiosity. Colleagues stop him with questions that sound more like those fired at a national team doctor than an economist.
How does Xavi Simons’ ACL injury affect the Dutch chances? What happens to the probabilities if a key forward pulls out? Does the model bend to the latest team news or hold its line?
The queries keep coming. So do the wagers.
“I’ve got several colleagues who bet some money on the Netherlands in response to me publishing that note,” Klement says. Suddenly, the orange bars on his charts have turned into real stakes for people he sees at the coffee machine.
And that, he admits, changes the mood. The joke is still there, but now it comes with a caveat. If the Netherlands crash out early, the oracle’s aura evaporates overnight – and the office sweepstakes go with it.
“If the Netherlands get eliminated from the World Cup, I think the next day I have to work from home,” he says.
The World Cup will decide whether his model remains a statistical curiosity with a perfect record or finally collides with the chaos it was built to highlight. Either way, when the Dutch kick off their campaign, an economist in London will be watching as nervously as any fan in orange.
