It may come as no surprise that Brazil are tournament favourites but the scientists at Bloomberg Sports (BSports), have confirmed what we already knew.

Using scientifically-calculated ratings for every nation in this summer’s World Cup BS Sport objectively ranked every team in this summer’s World Cup, indicate that the host nation Brazil are the strongest nation in the tournament; consistent with the sentiment among many bookmakers, experts and fans.

Included in the top five BSports ranked nations is Belgium, currently ranked 12^th in FIFA’s official world rankings. Spain, the current World Cup holders and No.1 ranked team in FIFA’s rankings are rated the 4^thstrongest team. Colombia, with a rating of 0.47 are ranked above Italy (0.40), Uruguay (0.39), England (0.35) and France (0.35).

How the rankings were calculated

Following the World Cup Finals draw and the completion of all qualifying rounds, BSports assigned each nation with a distinctive rating for both attack and defence, combining numerous data points such as form from qualifiers, previous World Cup performance and squad talent among other factors.

The offensive rating is a measure of a team’s probability of scoring goals, whilst the defensive rating is a measure of the prospect of that team preventing goals. This objective analysis, calculated using a proprietary model built by Bloomberg Sports mathematicians and engineers, is combined to offer a unique power rating for each nation.

BSports has been able to apply these ratings to simulate each match of the tournament over 100,000 times in order to provide an accurate projection for every potential outcome of the World Cup.

BSports full projections for the tournament, including in-depth analytics and forecasts for each team and matchup can be found at www.Bloomberg.com/WorldCup.