The Ball Is Round

The qualification matches for the European Championship of 2008 and the World Championship of 2010 for national football teams are analysed using a number of different models. Friendly matches between national teams in the same period were added to provide connectivity between the qualification pools. That model for which the highest evidence is obtained is used to predict the outcome of the championship.As the division into groups at the tournament is always heavily debated, it is also investigated whether and how this draw into groups influences the championship.The World Championship will be taking place at the time this poster is presented so that some of the predictive powers of the models can be judged immediately.