‘I ran out of luck’: Dutch defeat ends economist’s run of World Cup winning predictions

As if going out of the World Cup wasn’t bad enough, Virgil van Dijk’s Netherlands side have broken one predictive model’s 12-year streak of success. Photograph: Maja Hitij/Fifa/Getty Images

As shocks come thick and fast in the knockout stages of the World Cup’s last 32, arguably the biggest of them all lies off the field and at the door of the economist and football forecaster Joachim Klement, who has failed to predict the winning nation for the first time in four editions of the men’s tournament.

After correctly predicting Germany, France and Argentina would go on to lift the trophy in 2014, 2018 and 2022 respectively, Klement’s run is over after his “economic models” pointed him in the direction of Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands side this year.