There are three certainties in life. Death, taxes, and England underwhelming at major football tournaments. EA Sports' latest World Cup sim on FIFA 23 appears to make the latter seem a likely outcome.
The EA Sports World Cup sims have been successful in the past, correctly predicting the winners of the tournament in 2010 (Spain), 2014 (Germany), and 2018 (France). Their sim of the 2022 competition has some intriguing propositions - including an unexpected semi-finalist, and a routine first round elimination for England.
World Cup sim: England out early
EA Sports released the results of their World Cup sim on Tuesday.
Every four years, the game developers will run off the entirety of the World Cup through AI matchups, in an attempt to predict what to expect from the tournament proper. The results were good news for Argentina fans.
🇪🇸✅ 2010
🇩🇪✅ 2014
🇫🇷✅ 2018
🇦🇷❓ 2022
EA SPORTS has got it right since 2010 👀 See how the FIFA World Cup played out in the #FIFA23 simulation and have your say 🏆 https://t.co/rQ24tEwrTg pic.twitter.com/EuiyhQnPQI— EA SPORTS FIFA (@EASPORTSFIFA) November 8, 2022
EA Sports are predicting that Lionel Messi will finally get his hands on the World Cup crown on December 18, with Argentina projected to win a tight final against South American rivals Brazil.
Portugal, somewhat surprisingly, are predicted to reach the semi-finals, but Cristiano Ronaldo comes up short on his final World Cup appearance, with the clash of the Portuguese speaking nations ending in a Brazil win on penalties.
The World Cup sim also predicts the most easily foreseeable exit for Gareth Southgate's England side. According to EA Sports, they will not even manage to top their group featuring the USA, Wales, and Iran, coming out in second place, before losing comfortably to the Netherlands in the last 16.
EA Sports have predicted Argentina will win the World Cup in Qatar using FIFA 23 simulator. The same software was done in 2010 for Spain, 2014 for Germany and 2018 for France and all three predictions were correct. pic.twitter.com/h6ccJfGAXS
— All Sportz 🏀⚽ (@Allsportztv) November 8, 2022
The USA themselves are projected to reach the quarter finals, where they come out second best in a cagey affair with France.
Though we can't read too much into it, the World Cup sim does give us an intriguing insight into what to expect from the biggest competition in global football - as well as a flavour of some of the fantastic matchups we can look forward to early in the competition.
Reasonable predictions made by the EA Sports World Cup sim suggest that the last 16 could feature games such as the Netherlands v England, Germany v Belgium, Argentina v Denmark, and Croatia v Spain - where Croatia are predicted to take a surprising 2-1 win.
Elsewhere, FIFA released the results of the Golden Ball and Golden Boot tallies as part of their World Cup sim - and it appears as though it's set to be "Messi season" in Qatar.
The Argentinean is projected to win both awards, with 8 goals across the seven games in the tournament, with Memphis Depay coming in in second place with six goals, one ahead of Kylian Mbappé.
How accurate will the EA Sports FIFA 23 World Cup sim turn out to be?
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