If you were correct then soccer oddsmakers would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. The fact is that the average outcome occurs the majority of the time. High profile surprises like this cause people to question statistics, but this line of thinking is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The purpose of statistical inference isn't to predict the outcome of every event, but to be right slightly more often than not.
This world cup has been remarkably predictable on the whole. The favored team won the overwhelming majority of matches in group stages and in the rounds of 16 and 8. And most of favored teams qualified for the Cup in the first place. Soccer isn't unpredictable because of the impact of individuals or size of the teams or the nature of the game. It's just as predictable as any other sport, which is why bookmakers are able to set neutral odds that attract an equal amount of betting on both sides.
Of course there will be highly unpredictable results, and they will cause people to question the common sense idea that the most likely thing usually happens. Five Thirty Eight is a bit on their heels here because they have chosen to give themselves the job of explaining a predictable world to human minds that aren't built for understanding statistics. It's a difficult job and I don't envy them. This won't be the last time we see them talking about edge cases and outliers instead of just saying "The odds are right most of the time, which implies that sometimes they will be very wrong."
538 predicted the winner in the group stage correctly in 28 of 48 matches. For teams advancing out of the group stage, they got 7 out of 16 right. Maybe the results were "predictable", but only if you assume that people actually making predictions for some reason took no advantage of that predictability.
^^ this. Statistics help them average out their wins/losses across an entire season. But if the bookie's business model was to predict only the final game of each season and make odds for it they would _not_ be in business for long
This world cup has been remarkably predictable on the whole. The favored team won the overwhelming majority of matches in group stages and in the rounds of 16 and 8. And most of favored teams qualified for the Cup in the first place. Soccer isn't unpredictable because of the impact of individuals or size of the teams or the nature of the game. It's just as predictable as any other sport, which is why bookmakers are able to set neutral odds that attract an equal amount of betting on both sides.
Of course there will be highly unpredictable results, and they will cause people to question the common sense idea that the most likely thing usually happens. Five Thirty Eight is a bit on their heels here because they have chosen to give themselves the job of explaining a predictable world to human minds that aren't built for understanding statistics. It's a difficult job and I don't envy them. This won't be the last time we see them talking about edge cases and outliers instead of just saying "The odds are right most of the time, which implies that sometimes they will be very wrong."