Bravsen Predictions: xG-Based Outcome Probabilities
The Crime Index rules on matches after the final whistle. This page runs the same model the other way round: fed with both teams' xG history, it works out the odds of a win, draw or loss, the most probable scoreline, and a metric you won't find on any tipster site — the chance the match itself turns into a crime, a result that contradicts the run of play. Every call is locked in before kickoff and stays on the public record below, misses included.
Predictions for Upcoming Matches
Backtest: The Model vs. World Cup 2026
Before shipping the model, we ran it backward through the entire World Cup knockout stage under one hard rule: for every fixture, it could only see the xG history that actually existed before kickoff — no hindsight, no peeking at the final score. The result: 24 correct outcomes out of 31, a 77% hit rate. Narrow it to the confident calls, where the favorite sat at 55% or higher, and it climbs to 12 of 14 — 86%.
It got the final right, too: Spain over Argentina at 42% to 29%, built on an expected xG split of 0.87–0.50 — a cautious pick, but the correct one, backed up by the actual 1-0 scoreline and a 20-2 shot count. The two knockout misses tell their own story: Switzerland's scoreless draw with Colombia (combined xG of 0.31 — a coin flip by definition), and the France–England semi-final, a 4-6 thriller that no model on earth would have called. Thirty-one matches is a small sample, and we're upfront about that: the real exam starts with the club season, and its results will accumulate in the track record above.
How a Prediction Gets Made
No black box here. A team's attacking strength is the average xG it has produced across its last ten matches with real tracking data; its defensive weakness is the average xG it has conceded over the same run. Expected goals for the upcoming fixture come from multiplying one side's attack by the other's leakiness, adjusted for the league's scoring level and a home-field bump (dropped entirely on neutral-venue tournaments). A Poisson distribution then unpacks those two numbers into a full matrix of scoreline probabilities, from which we read off win/draw/loss odds and the single most likely score.
Anomaly risk is the probability of a result going against the xG favorite, boosted for "small-numbers football": the lower the combined expected goals, the more a match hinges on one bounce — the core lesson from our xG explainer. Each prediction is calculated once and frozen — recalculating the odds an hour before kickoff and then bragging about accuracy isn't something we're willing to do. If a team has fewer than four matches of xG data, the model stays silent. Bravsen doesn't publish odds and doesn't give betting advice — this is statistics, not bookmaking.
Questions About the Model
How does Bravsen predict match outcomes?
From each team's xG history: attacking strength is the average xG a team has created in its recent matches, defensive weakness is the average xG it has conceded. Multiplying those two numbers, adjusted for the league's scoring level, produces expected goals for the fixture — a Poisson distribution then turns that pair of numbers into win/draw/loss probabilities and a full scoreline matrix.
What is anomaly risk?
The odds that a match ends as a "crime against xG" — a result that goes against the run of play. Risk climbs when a fixture is expected to be low-scoring: in a match with few chances, one deflection can decide everything. It's a Bravsen-original metric — most prediction sites only publish outcome odds.
How accurate are the predictions?
Backtested against the World Cup 2026 knockout rounds, the model called 77% of outcomes (24 of 31), rising to 86% among confident calls (55%+ favorite probability). That's a small sample, and club-season accuracy will likely run lower — every prediction is locked in before kickoff and logged in the public track record on this page.
Are these betting tips?
No. Bravsen doesn't publish odds, doesn't partner with bookmakers, and gives no betting advice. This is a statistical probability model — a way to understand the game, not to profit from it.
New to xG — read the plain-language explainer. See the same model rule on matches already played in the case archive.