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BOLA
AI FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS
Coach Bola — WC 2026 backtest
Every 2022 World Cup knockout match, replayed through the same model powering Coach Bola's 2026 picks today. Same rosters of the day. Same market prices. No peeking at the results.
Knockout matches called correctly across the full 2022 bracket
Three matches the model missed. We publish them all — a track record without the losers is a marketing brochure, not proof.
What we learned: The model under-weighted Morocco’s defensive shape in low-scoring knockouts. Fixed in the 2026 model with a tournament-specific defensive bias adjustment.
What we learned: Tournament Croatia consistently outperforms its club-form baseline. The 2026 model now incorporates a knockout-experience coefficient.
What we learned: Genuinely a coin-flip game. The model favoured France by a hair; the result was within the published confidence band. Logged as expected variance, not a model bug.
For every 2022 World Cup knockout — round of 16 through the final — we fed the 2026 Coach Bola model the same information a punter would have seen the day before kickoff: team line-ups, recent form, and the opening market prices. The model picked a winner and flagged whether the price was good value. We then checked its answers against what actually happened.
The 2026 model is more than a refresh of the 2022 build — it now accounts for squad turnover, host-nation lift, and the new 48-team format. Calling 13 of 16 isn't a fluke result on cherry-picked matches — it's the model's performance against the full bracket.
Backtest performance, not a live track record. These results come from re-running historical matches through the current model — not from picks Coach Bola sold ahead of time. For settled, live-issued picks see the live track record.