In this World Cup, Brazil has a 28% chance of winning. The following is Spain, holding 16% ? and the Argentinians with 12%. These and other curiosities are the result of a study made by FGV's School of Applied Mathematics (FGV/EMAp), which took in consideration all the results of the 207 FIFA official teams in the last four  years.?Observing the number of goals for and goals against in every match, and based on the attack and defense force of each team, we are able to calculate the attack and defense force of each of those teams. That's it, it is recursive. This is an equation we solved in order to have such an estimate - each team's attack and defense force?, explains professor Moacyr Alvim, who coordinated the study along with professor Paulo Cezar Carvalho.According to him, the idea of making this study came from curiosity, motivated by fun. ?It was a snooker championship with some of my family members. Participants played games when and with the opponents they wanted, recording the results. After a while, the number of games of each contestant was way too different and the quality of opponents was considerably diversified, and we didn't know how to classify contestants with a reasonable criterion?, he says.Therefore, the solution was to settle the issue at EMAp.  ?I brought this problem to the School and we discussed about ranking algorithms. Google's PageRank was eventually applied to that snooker championship, but only for fun.  However, the discussion at EMAp made people interested and we soon started to apply mathematical and statistical techniques to football and tennis results?, he mentions.A box of surprisesIn 100 thousand simulations of all 2014 World Cup matches, Brazil won the championship in 28 thousand simulations.  That's why we can state that Brazil's odds to win is 28%. But casualities were also taken in consideration. ?With the data of attack and defense force of each team, we can simulate a match between two different teams ?  obviously including a strong random element in such simulation.  It is much more likely that Brazil wins the match against Cameroon, but the victory by Cameroon might occur with low probability?, remarks Moacyr.And football brings surprises even in statistics. ?I was surprised with the very poor performance in the simulations between Portugal and Italy, which are well positioned in FIFA's ranking table and are considered, informally among friends, strong teams?, says Moacyr.The results of simulations were released during a show at Globonews TV channel on May 20, and in an article published yesterday by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. The plans of disseminating the study to a larger audience do not stop here. ?The topic is amusing and the mathematic tools too ? well, this is my opinion. It's an excellent subject to work with students?, he mentions.Click here and learn more results in Globo News TV report (available only in Portuguese).