Belgium–Switzerland

2–1

HT 0–0

Kick-off: Friday, 12 October 2018 at 18:45
Status: Match Finished

Referee

There's no card data for this referee from before this match yet. We don't invent an average; it will appear here once the data exists.

Model prediction

Why this prediction?

The model puts the most likely outcome at 65.0%: “Belgium to win”. Second comes “a draw” at 21.0%.
The highest double chance value is 86.0% (1X — Belgium win or draw).
These values were computed from 985 past matches.

This is a prediction, not a guarantee; a probability is not a certainty.

These sentences are built by a fixed template; every number in them comes straight from the model's computation, none invented while the text was written.

Belgium to win65.0%

Draw21.0%

Switzerland to win14.0%

When the model has said 65–70% in the past, 1,059 of 1,563 predictions were correct (67.8%). Accuracy record →

Double chance

1X — Belgium win or draw

These three values add up to 200%, not 100% — and that is not a mistake. The options are not mutually exclusive; every outcome is counted in two of them. For the same reason 1X plus X2 exceeds 100% by exactly the probability of a draw (21.0%).

What these probabilities rest on

Expected goals comes out of a team's attack weighed against its opponent's defence. A strong attack is damped when it meets a strong defence — which is why comparing the ratings on their own is misleading.

Belgium

Attack: Belgium score 115% more than the league's average team — one of the sharpest attacks in the league.

Opponent's defence: Switzerland concede 36% below the league average — a defence that seriously brakes even a strong attack.

Switzerland

Attack: Switzerland score 54% more than the league's average team — one of the sharpest attacks in the league.

Opponent's defence: Belgium concede 40% below the league average — a defence that seriously brakes even a strong attack.

Week 3 of the season. This prediction was computed from previous seasons. Summer transfers, budget changes and squad rebuilds aren't in the ratings yet — the model can only see that a team has been rebuilt once new results come in.

We measured this: the bias is only pronounced in the opening week. In this week the model's overall accuracy does not separate from the rest of the season — that is, we found no measurable flaw. The one tendency across all opening weeks is that home wins are called slightly too often (said 43.0%, got 41.9%; n=583).

This sample is small and not statistically established, which is why we do not correct the model for it. The correction we tried (pulling probabilities toward the league average) didn't win on holdout, so it wasn't added. Read opening-week predictions with a little more caution.