A university professor has developed a mathematical formula which, he claims, shows Germany will win the soccer World Cup in South Africa in June.
Germany face Australia, Serbia and Ghana in Group D, but Metin Tolan, a physics professor at the University of Dortmund, is convinced Germany captain Michael Ballack will be lifting the World Cup following the final on July 11.
The scientist has written a formula based on trigonometry which analyses all Germany’s results from previous World Cups and predicts a winner for this year’s tournament.
Having won the World Cup three times — in 1954, 1974 and 1990 — Germany’s average finishing place at previous tournaments is 3.7 and Tolan says his formula shows this will be Germany’s year to lift the trophy.
“It is very simple, all my calculations prove this,” he told the Zeit Wissen magazine. “The last time we won the World Cup was back in 1990 and there have been four tournaments since. The average finishing place of the Germany team is 3.7 and the German team wins the title every fourth or fifth World Cup. Nobody can beat us this year and you can already put the champagne on ice.”
Tolan already predicted Germany would win the last World Cup, which they hosted in 2006, but unfortunately for his theory the home nation were beaten by eventual winners Italy in the semi-finals.
“My formula gave the winner for the following World Cup, this is why it works this time for sure,” he explained, undeterred after Jurgen Klinsmann’s side beat Portugal 3-1 to finish third at the last World Cup.
Tolan’s equations, however, could also help Germany’s arch-rivals England, who were dumped out of the last World Cup after being beaten on penalties by Portugal.
“The weakest kicker should take the first penalty, then the second-weakest and so on,” he said. “Then you have the greatest chance of scoring as many goals as possible.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier