Quantum Leap
From the pages of the NZ Herald comes this:
Fear not, fans of the Three Lions, the World Cup is yours. Financial analysts at JP Morgan have crunched the numbers and found that England will triumph in South Africa.
Bank boffins Matthew Burgess and Marco Dion used quant methodology (that's the use of mathematical data to assess investment opportunities - do try to keep up) to find that Fabio Capello's men will end 44 years of hurt by downing Spain in the final. According to their numbers, Holland will finish third. No word on the All Whites.
"Having developed a rather successful quant model over the years," Burgess and Dion say, "we intend to introduce it to our readers and also use its methodology to apply it to a fruitful field for statistics: football and the World Cup."
Swiss bank UBS sees things differently. They're predicting Brazil will triumph in South Africa. Using economic theory, the Swiss bankers rate Brazil a 22 per cent chance of lifting the cup and Germany an 18 per cent chance (this was before the exit of Michael Ballack).
The fondue-munchers have calculated England won't make it past the quarter-finals. Again. And, again, no word on the All Whites.
I'm already sick and tired of lazy journalists, ad-men and associated cretins trotting out '44 years of hurt'. Every world cup since that bloody song, it's x years of hurt. Football is a cataclysm of cliche and I, for one, am sick as a parrot of it!
ReplyDeleteYou really have to worry when these financial experts come up with Germany having an 18% chance of winning the World Cup (Ballack or no Ballack)
ReplyDeleteUBS correctly predicted that Italy would win the World Cup (in 2006).
ReplyDeleteAnd Italy weren't the favourites..