World Cup: The Sweet 16

Here we are, down to the Round of 16 in the biggest World Cup ever. It's far from over, but already the 2026 vintage has been a resounding success. The tournament is boasting record-breaking attendance and soaring TV ratings. It's no surprise when have so many goals, late-game heroics, unexpected upsets, and big performances from football's biggest stars, including Messi and Mbappe.

Source: world-cup-26.com 

More goals have been scored in this World Cup than any other. Sure, more games have been played in this tournament (88) than any other as well. However, the previous high was in Qatar in 2022 when there were 172 goals over 64 games. The current tournament exceeded that in the 59th game hitting 177 goals. The 2.92 goals per match is the best since Mexico 1970, long considered one of the best World Cups (though Qatar 2022 produced the best final). And the stars are playing their part. Messi has come life, scoring at a blistering pace-- seven goals in four matches! Not to be undone Mbappe has now scored 18 goals in 18 World Cup matches (2018, 2022, and 2026)! This World Cup has also shown the growing footballing prowess of African countries. Ten African nations qualified for the tournament (Algeria, Cape Verde--oh Cape Verde, DR Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Morrocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia); nine made it to the knock-out stages! Cape Verde, DR Congo, and Senegal may have just fallen short against the traditional footballing powers, but Morrocco and Egypt carry on.

Here's to more drama, thrilling endings, and goals, goals, goals!

World Cup 2026: Ki Djogu, Kabu Verdi!

Before the 2026 World Cup, many (most?) people had not heard of Cape Verde, let alone find it on a map. But this tiny island nation off the West African coast with a population of just 530,000 quickly became the story of the World Cup, after drawing with past winners Spain and Uruguay in its first two games and making it into the knockout stage of the tournament in its very first appearance! 

Still, no one expected much of the 67th ranked FIFA team against reigning the world champions and the #1 ranked FIFA team. One headline before the match in Yahoo sports was "Salah Awaits Messi as Egypt Beat Australia on Penalties..." Well in the end, an exhausted and drained Argentina narrowly--very narrowly--avoided one of the all-time great upsets by edging out Cape Verde 3-2 in extra time in one of the best matches in World Cup history. An instant classic.

Messi got his seventh goal of the tournament with a deft touch to open the scoring in the 29th minute, and it looked like Argentina would score more. But Cape Verde, who started slow, came back from behind twice to level the game. Sidny Lopes Cabral's second equalizer, a wicked curling shot from the top left corner of the penalty box, was arguably the goal of the tournament:

Cape Verde's 40-year-old goalkeeper and Instagram sensation Josimar Jose Evora Dias, or simply "Vozinha", had another exceptional game with 10 saves against Argentina, including 5 against Messi. By the end of the 30 minutes of extra time, Cape Verde was increasingly looking like they were going to equalize a third time. Argentina's Emiliano Martinez needed to be a make a spectacular save to keep Sidny Lopes from scoring again in the 116th minute. By the end, Argentinian players were visibly wilting in the heat and humidity of Miami and just (just) managed to hold on. Highlights of Argentina's great escape here:

Super fans in Dhaka will be relieved. They were not expecting this.

This Day in Physics

On Jun 30, 121 years ago, Albert Einstein's groundbreaking paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (original German version: "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper) was received by the journal Annalen der Physik. In it, Einstein laid the foundation for the theory of special relativity, introducing key principles that transformed our understanding of space, time, and electromagnetism.

The following video provides the key insights of the paper:

Along with his other 1905 papers (photoelectric effect--for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence), it became part of the 'annual mirabilis' works that transformed 20th-century science.

Who Will Win the World Cup...The Usual Suspects?

The 2026 FIFA World Cup began in North America Earlier this week. The World Cup is the showcase event of the world's most popular sport and easily the biggest sporting event on the planet--FIFA estimates five billion people tuned in at some point to watch the 2022 tournament in Qatar. This edition of the World Cup is expected to eclipse the last one. FIFA projects that the current tournament, hosted across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico with a record 48 teams, could engage up to six billion people globally.

Football/ soccer is played in over 210 countries; basically in every country and territory across the planet. There have been 22 past World Cups since 1930, with 80 different countries participating. Yet, time and time again, the same few countries manage to win the tournament. As shown below, only eight countries have World Cup: Brazil (5), Italy (4), Germany (4), Argentina (3), France (2), Uruguay (2), Spain (1), and England (1). That's it...no one else. Fairly even between Europe (12) and South America (10), but always seemingly the same few countries. A number of factors can help explain this phenomenon, including that European and South American nations benefit from higher league competition density, have deeper player pools, and longer institutional experience in elite tournaments. Is this unusual? Not really...As we noted previously, within Europe's major football leagues a just a few  teams similarly dominate.  

So, who will win this tournament? The prediction markets, Polymarket and Kalshi, provides possibly the best insights into what most people are thinking. Both have former winners Spain (16% Polymarket, 17% Kalshi) and France (17% Polymarket, 16% Kalshi) as the top two favorites (as of June 13). Surprisingly, both also have Portugal (10.8%, 10.5%, respectively) as the third choice; somewhat of an egalitarian choice. Buy hey, the wisdom of crowd concept does argue that the collective intelligence of a large, diverse group of people can often make better decisions or predictions than any single individual or a small group of experts. 

Speaking of whom, what do the geeks say? By that, we mean Wall Street forecasters of course! And who better than Goldman Sachs's pedigreed economics team. Goldman, and its German chief economist Jan Hatzius, apply the same approach they might use to make market calls. Goldman's prediction engine is based on nearly 20,000 international matches since 1978, using the Elo rating system to measure team strength (based on match results and opponent quality). The model incorporates: historical performance, scoring talent, team momentum, geographical factors, and the "winner's slump" to adjust for the challenges of repeating. The bank ran 50,000 Monte Carlo simulations to estimate win probabilities. Spain emerges as the favorite in Goldman's model with a 26% probability of winning the World Cup, followed by France (at 19%), Argentina (at 14%), Brazil (at 8%), and England (at 5%). All previous winners (see above). 

Likewise, a team of European academics also built a World Cup prediction engine utilizing machine learning. Their model blends four strength signals: team abilities from historic results (a bivariate Poisson model with exponential time-weighting), a bookmaker-consensus rating from 24 bookmakers, plus-minus player ratings, and transfer market values to produce probabilistic forecasts based on 100,000 simulations. This model also has Spain as the favorite to win the World Cup at 14.5%, closely followed by England and France at 12.4% each and Germany at 11.2%.

These models (or any model for that matter) almost by definition use comparatively limited information that is a small portion of all the information that’s arguably in the possession of the millions of people that have bet online into prediction markets. But they also have less bias and recency bias, so who knows. 

Then there’s AI. Anthropic’s newest model Claude Fable 5 also predicts Spain (18%) will beat France (14%) in the final, followed by Argentina (11%), England (10%!), Brazil (8%), and…Portugal (7%). 

So, whether it's prediction markets, econometric models, or AI it's still the usual suspects that mostly come up as projected winners... 

After nearly three days and seven matches, some observations:

Team USA had the most dominant first match (against Paraguay)

American Gio Reyna had arguably the best goal so far

Qatar had the most surprising result holding Switzerland to a draw with a dramatic late equalizer

Brazil vs Morocco was the most exciting game  

NY Knicks are NBA Champions!

After 53 years…it’s coming back home! They did it in five after another clutch performance from their captain Jalen Brunson.

Start Spreading the News...the Knicks Have the New York State of Mind!

What was looking like the Madison Square Garden massacre turned into an MSG miracle, as the Knicks made an improbable comeback from 29 points down to beat the Spurs 107-106! It was the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history!

There was so much going, but in the end OG Anunoby saved the Knicks with a game-winning tip-in. Per the Athletic: "It was just a fingertip, a redirection, a deflection. But to New York Knicks coach Mike Brown, it was the greatest shot ever taken in the basketball capital of the world." Indeed, it was truly one of the most remarkable moments in Knicks history! It certainly made the $3,500+ get in price for Game 4 (which itself had plummeted from $13,500 after the Knicks lost Game 3), totally worth it! 

Full highlights here:

Knicks Mania!

The New York Knickerbockers are just two games away from their first NBA championship in 53 years after just edging out the Spurs 105-104 in a thrilling Game 2 at San Antonio. The Knicks survived a dramatic 14-point swing late in the game to win their 13th consecutive post-season game. It's the second longest (single-season) streak in the history of the NBA Playoffs, passing the Spurs’ 12-game streak in 1999… against the Knicks! Here's the last 5 minutes:

Now Knicks mania is sweeping New York (see below). With the series now heading to NYC, the possibility of seeing the Knicks win their first NBA title since 1973 in person at Madison Square Garden have caused ticket prices for Games 3 and 4 to skyrocket. The get-in price for Game 3 is now over $11,700! And for Game 4 (which could be the series clincher) the cheapest tickets are going for more than $14,650! As reported in the WSJ, the most expensive seats are priced at $176,000, thanks to...finance bros who not only want to see, but (just as importantly) want to be seen. Per the WSJ, '“If you’re not there, you’re a loser,” [India Sienna] said of the psychology behind such purchases.' 

Wall Street is riding high after a strong bonus season and is looking forward towards the blockbuster IPOs of SpaceX and Anthropic in the summer to keep the party going, so splurging on a touchstone moment in New Yorks sports seems right. But ordinary New Yorkers are benefitting too (even if they can't afford to see the Knicks in person). America's favorite mayor and avid Knicks fan, Zohran Mamdani, announced that more than $200 million has been made so far in the Knicks postseason for the city! By Wednesday, perhaps it'll be $500 million! Here's a taste of NYC is the midst of Knicks mania...