After nearly a month of pulse-racing, heart-stopping action, the World Cup is down to its final two teams. It’ll be three-time champions Germany, who made its way to the final with an emphatic 7-1 win over hosts Brazil versus Lionel Messi and two-time champs Argentina, who needed over two hours and a penalty shootout to edge the Netherlands in their semifinal.
In anticipation of the big final, we’ve compiled picks from some intrepid soccer experts and analysts to see which of these multiple-time world champions adds another trophy to their collection. For an in-depth analysis on the match itself, check out our Germany vs. Argentina preview.
Should these experts’ opinions be enough to convince you on the eventual World Cup champion, create a betting account now and follow their sage advice.
Experts Picks & Predictions for the 2014 World Cup Final
Artificial Intelligence/Projection System
Expert
Finals Prediction
Cortana
Germany
Bloomberg
Germany
Cor-what-a? Players of the video game Halo and Windows Phone users will be more intimately familiar with Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant and counterpart to Apple’s Siri. But these days, she’s busy with more than silly video games and smartphone commands; she’s predicting World Cup matches, and absolutely killing at it, too.
Cortana has gone an incredible 14-0 in predicting the last 14 World Cup match winners, and she has picked Germany to defeat Argentina in the final.
With all due respect to Cortana, you don’t need to be a highly sophisticated piece of software to figure out that Germany is the odds-on favorite to win. After thoroughly destroying Brazil in the semifinal, it’s hard to see the Germans faltering against Argentina.
The midfield of Bastian Schweinsteiger, Sami Khedira and Toni Kroos tore Brazil to shreds, while the brilliant Thomas Muller scored his fifth goal of the tournament. Their defending has also been spot on, led by the commanding presence of leading Golden Glove candidate Manuel Neuer.
Bloomberg’s super smart projection system concurs that Germany will lift this year’s trophy, but their victory won’t come after 90 minutes. The system has the final as a close 1-1 draw at full-time, with Germany emerging on top either after extra time or in a penalty shootout.
It’s definitely not a stretch to see the final extend past the allotted 90 minutes. In the last few games alone, we’ve seen Argentina go to extra time twice in their three knockout stage matches, while Germany needed extra time to defeat Algeria in the round of 16.
The last two World Cup finals have also gone into extra time. Italy defeated France in a penalty shootout in 2006, while Andres Iniesta’s 116th-minute goal saw Spain past the Netherlands in 2010.
Bleacher Report
Expert
Finals Prediction
Timothy Rapp
Argentina, 2-1
Perhaps these state-of-the-art systems are underestimating just how great Argentina’s Lionel Messi really is. Bleacher Report’s Timothy Rapp, however, does not discount the little magician’s ability. He has Messi bagging a brace of goals to lead Argentina to a 2-1 upset over Germany.
Messi has been stuck at four goals since the beginning of the knockout rounds, and he was held relatively silent by the Netherlands in the semifinal, but his influence remains as strong as ever. With Angel di Maria likely to be out of the final and Sergio Aguero still woefully out of form, Messi will need to be at his best to topple the Germans.
Top Bet
Expert
Finals Prediction
Top Bet
Germany, 2-0
As much as we’d like to side with Rapp with Messi and Argentina – after all, we did predict them to emerge as champions and Messi to win the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot in our World Cup preview at the beginning of the tournament, Germany just looked incredible against Brazil. Meanwhile, Argentina has not convinced all tournament long, and will possibly have a key player in di Maria missing.
We expect a comfortable 2-0 victory for the Germans, and keep Messi silent much like how the Netherlands did in their previous match.
