AI Likes Chelsea
FIFA Club World Cup 2025
Chelsea faces Palmeiras tonight at 9pm EDT in Philadelphia but the Opta supercomputer already puts them ahead. In over 10,000 machine-learning simulations run after the Round of 16, Chelsea holds a 26.8% chance to win the tournament—slightly ahead of PSG. Opta, part of Stats Perform, blends AI with sabermetrics, a data-first method pioneered in baseball and dramatized in Moneyball. Where baseball tracked on-base percentage, soccer now models xG, pressing rates, and pass value. Some sports resist this approach—ice hockey most famously—due to its chaotic flow and overlapping actions. Tonight we will find out: is soccer more like baseball, or more like ice hockey when modeling?