EA Sports is either extremely lucky, very knowledgeable of World Cups in particular, or has accurate premonitions on a regular basis. Or it could simply be that their FIFA series is wildly accurate at simulating World Cups. Why are we making these assumptions? Because EA has now guessed the last four World Cup champions correctly.
The Qatar experiment was an unquestionable success from an entertainment angle. There were goal bonanzas, there was late-game drama, plenty of games headed to extra time and most of them finished in penalties, a neutral soccer fan’s dream.
The 2022 World Cup final somehow managed to fit all of those elements into one and pleased many fans by ending in a trophy for Lionel Messi, who is becoming more difficult to dispute as the greatest player ever with every match he plays.
We would have known all of this would happen if we had just seen this tweet by EA Sports a month back:
EA is not lying. The video game publisher has somehow designed the perfect prediction machine with its FIFA series. The soccer simulators have not let us down at a World Cup for more than a decade, nailing every single champion since South Africa: Spain in 2010, Germany in 2014, France in 2018, and now Argentina in 2022.
Argentina suffered from this prediction accuracy in 2014. Messi at his very best could not push his team over the German hill. Eight years later, FIFA 23 said the legend would get his due in the twilight of his career, and so he did.
It’s not like it was a no-contest road to the gold medals either. Argentina endured a nightmare beginning of the group stage, a last-second equalizer vs. the Netherlands in the quarter-finals, a penalty shoot-out against the Dutch, then another collapse in the final, followed by more nerves of steel on penalties.
It’s a great achievement for Leo Messi and FIFA. We’re not trying to compare winning the World Cup to running some in-game simulations, but guessing four World Cup winners in a row is not something we can attribute to rotten luck anymore. There must be some method to the madness that any bettor wishes they had at their disposal.
