London: Making a ‘bold’ claim, Lloyd’s of London has tipped England to win the 2022 FIFA football World Cup. Lloyd’s has made the prediction using a forecasting model that successfully predicted France would win in 2018 and Germany in 2014.
According to Lloyd’s, England will emerge victorious over Brazil in the final - with France, Argentina and Spain falling just behind. It has created the prediction model based on the collective ‘insurable value’ of all 32 teams set to play in Qatar.
Lloyd’s model said England would finish top of Group B before securing knockout wins against Senegal, France, Spain and Brazil.
Lloyd’s has also rated England’s Jude Bellingham the most insurable player at the FIFA World Cup, followed by France’s Kylian Mbappé and Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior.
How did Lloyd’s come to this conclusion?
The research, backed by data and analysis from the Centre of Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Sporting Intelligence, works under the notion that salaries in elite football are a decent substitution for talent.
The research methodology uses players’ wages, endorsement incomes, and additional indicators to construct an economic model that estimates players’ revenues. These projections formed the basis for assessing insurable values by player age, playing position and nationality. “The analysis enabled Lloyd’s to predict who would qualify from their respective groups,” Lloyd’s said in a press release.
After that, Lloyd’s plotted the path of each team in the knockout stages based on their insurable values. The team with the highest insurable value in each match is the team Lloyd’s predicts to win and progress.
What is the players’ insurable value?
With an estimated insurable value of 3.17 billion pounds, England edge out France (2.66 billion pounds) and Brazil (2.56 billion pounds) to claim the top spot. By comparison, the average insurable value of one England or France player is more than the entire Costa Rica squad.
Tournament players have an estimated insurable value of almost 22 billion pounds, an increase of nearly 9 billion pounds since 2018. Moreover, players aged 18-24 have an average insurable value of 32 million pounds compared to 12 million pounds for players over 31.
Forward players’ average insurable value remains the highest at 34 million pounds. The Group B teams, containing England (3.17 billion pounds), USA (410 million pounds), Wales (180 million pounds), and Iran (101 million pounds), is the most substantial one in terms of insurable value, amounting to a cumulative 3.9 billion pounds.
Bruce Carnegie-Brown, Lloyd’s chairman, said: “As Lloyd’s goes for the hat-trick of correct World Cup predictions, we’re shining a spotlight on the need for protection at all levels of the game to help clubs, competitors, and communities make braver decisions both on and off the pitch.”
