Sorry Neymar Jr — turns out Joachim Klement was right about being wrong

German mathematician and economist Joachim Klement created his World Cup forecasting model to showcase the absurdity of trying to predict outcomes. According to Klement, “luck” plays an equally important role in predicting outcomes and he was “lucky” to have predicted the FIFA World Cup winner for the past three editions of 2014, 2018 and 2022.

Come 2026, Klement “predicted” the Netherlands would win this year’s World Cup edition, and he was soon trending across social platforms and news as a clairvoyant rather than a critic who wanted to prove that statistical predictions more often go wrong than right.

But with the Netherlands crashing out of the World Cup as Morocco edged past them on penalties, Klement finally got it “right” by going “wrong” as he had previously mentioned in an interview. (https://www.fortuneindia.com/business-news/mathematician-who-predicted-past-three-fifa-cup-winners-on-why-he-sees-netherlands-winning-this-year/145315). Similarly, his model had “predicted” that Japan would hand over a shock defeat to Brazil, which too proved otherwise.

But as always, context is lost in mass hysteria.

Netizens trolled Klement after the Brazilian national football team’s lead striker, Neymar Jr., wrote on X: https://x.com/neymarjr/status/2071693375951020227 “Sr. Joachim klement … favor tentar na próxima copa” [Mr. Joachim Klement... please try again at the next World Cup] with a winking emoji. That post, as expected, went viral across social media with 12.5 million views.

But the man himself finds the attention “amusing and worrying” and tells Fortune India that the turn of events just goes to show how people fall for the promise of those who claim to be able to predict the future. In a follow-up interview, Klement says that he will not make the mistake of tweaking his model and that his World Cup forecasts need to be “taken as a bit of fun and entertainment.”

Are you happy now for getting it "right" or were you happy in 2014, 2018 and 2022 by getting it "wrong"?

I am quite glad I got it “right” this time, in the sense that I showed how much luck is involved in predicting the world Cup. I will not make any more forecasts in this tournament, because in the past, I never adjusted my model mid-tournament, and I don’t want to start now. Another mistake people make is to think because they got a forecast wrong, their model must be broken. Then they start to change things even though false forecasts are to be expected with every model. I plan to make another forecast, though, for the next world Cup in four years.

Your forecasting exercise was meant to prove the point that predictions are as likely to go wrong as right, since luck plays such a big role -- but because you got “lucky” with your predictions for the past three World Cup editions, people began seeing you more as a clairvoyant rather than a mathematician who wanted to prove that statistical models can fail!

It is amusing but also worrying. It shows how many people fall for the promise of people who claim to be able to predict the future. So many people are looking for certainty and someone who can tell them what to do even though the world is inherently uncertain and nobody can give you that certainty.

I have been trained as a mathematician and a physicist and in physics, there used to be this concept of a “watchmaker universe” where people thought there was a divine watchmaker who designed the universe and set it in motion. But once this watch is set in motion, things go like clockwork and remain predictable. We know that thanks to quantum mechanical effects no such predictability exists in the universe, and we learned about that by examining the watch and learning how it does and does not work. Yet, instead of learning about the watch, most people want to meet the watchmaker. And that is exactly the wrong thing to do, in my view.

What has been the response of the Dutch media/public following the sudden exit of the Netherlands?

The Dutch media and public were very relaxed. They took it in the right stride by acknowledging that this was all a bit of entertainment to teach a lesson about the role of luck in an uncertain world. I was very happy to see that reaction, to be honest.

Can we now assume here the 50% "luck" factor worked against the model, while the statistical part was right? Will you tweak the model to predict a new winner based on the current outcome, or will you rather look at the next world cup four years from now?

I am sure the statistical part of the model is not broken, so I am not going to change anything. Just like I was lucky to be right the last three times, I was ‘unlucky’ to be wrong this time. There is no mystery here, just the nature of probabilistic events.

If you are not going to tweak the current model, personally, who do you think will most likely face off in the finals and emerge as winner?

I am not going to tweak the model, but watching the games so far, the two best teams clearly are Spain and France. Unfortunately, they will meet in the semifinal already, but I think whoever wins that match will also win the tournament. At the moment, my heart says Spain will win against France, but just last night, France again showed incredibly good football.

Will you be writing a follow-up note on how you how you finally got it right?

I already did at https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/gutted. I am a professional economist and investment strategist. In investments we know that we make false predictions all the time. As the saying goes: to make money, you have to be right six out of eleven times.

So far, I have been right three out of four times, so rest assured, I will be back in four years with a new set of forecasts. But, hopefully, by then people will have learned about my main message that luck is the most important factor, and no model or system can make perfect forecasts. All we can hope for is to be right more often than we are wrong.

Football matches are inherently unpredictable, which is why watching football (or any sport for that matter) is so much fun.

And as long as this is taken as a bit of fun and entertainment, I will continue making my World Cup forecasts.