There is a peculiar kind of credibility that comes not from certainty, but from being right about uncertain things. Joachim Klement, a German mathematician and economist, has spent the better part of twelve years insisting his model for predicting World Cup winners is fundamentally unreliable. The football world has spent the same period watching him be right, again and again.
Klement correctly identified Germany as the 2014 champion, France in 2018, and Argentina in 2022. Now, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup spanning the United States, Canada, and Mexico, he is back with his latest forecast: the Netherlands will finally end their long wait and lift the trophy for the first time.
His projected path to glory is specific. Ronald Koeman’s side, he believes, will defeat a European opponent in the semi-final before overcoming Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal in the final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. England, under Thomas Tuchel, are tipped to fall at the semi-final stage.
It is a scenario that would script football history. The Dutch have reached three World Cup finals, in 1974, 1978, and 2010, and lost all three. A fourth appearance, with a win this time, would close one of the sport’s longest running sagas of the Oranje never winning a World Cup.
What makes Klement’s methodology interesting is precisely what he admits about it: it does not purely reward the best team. His model incorporates a country’s GDP per capita, on the grounds that economic strength correlates with sporting infrastructure. Population size features, as does the cultural status of football within each nation. FIFA rankings provide a sporting baseline. And then there is what Klement openly describes as an element of chance, a deliberate acknowledgement that football, at the level of a World Cup, is not simply a meritocracy.
That admission of randomness is, paradoxically, part of what makes the model intellectually honest. When Germany won in Brazil in 2014, Klement was reportedly taken aback. Experts had widely noted that no European team had ever won a World Cup on South American soil. His model disagreed, and his model was right. He has since been careful not to let that track record calcify into overconfidence. Telling Der Spiegel that predicting tournament outcomes was like tossing a coin, he warned that anyone placing a bet based on his work was, in his words, beyond help.
Yet the record speaks for itself. Three consecutive correct predictions, stretching back twelve years, is not nothing. It is not proof of an infallible formula either, but it is enough to command attention. In the increasingly crowded space of football analytics, where algorithms and simulations proliferate, Klement stands out for a different reason: he is sceptical of his own output. That scepticism, worn openly, has earned him an odd sort of authority.
For the Netherlands, the pick will carry emotional weight. A generation of Dutch fans grew up watching Johan Cruyff’s Total Football produce spectacular football, but no trophy. The 1974 team lost to West Germany in the final. The 1978 side fell to Argentina. In 2010, a pragmatic Dutch outfit was beaten by Spain’s extra-time goal in South Africa. The distance between quality and victory has been a recurring theme in Dutch football history. Klement’s model, apparently indifferent to romantic narrative, has chosen them anyway.
Whether the mathematics holds for a fourth time will become clear by July 19. The Netherlands open their campaign against Japan on June 14. They are listed among the genuine contenders, their squad built around Premier League quality and the tactical clarity Koeman has brought since taking charge. The semi-final and final projections will be stress-tested match by match.
Until then, the most interesting figure in the story may not be the Dutch themselves, but the economist somewhere in Germany watching closely, hoping once again to be horrified by being right.
