The Beautiful Pool

In 2010, 33 Chilean miners were trapped underground for 70 days. In 2014, they made the greatest World Cup video ever.

I think we are on track to have the greatest Beautiful Pool ever, but I need your help. Get your picks to me: STAT.

There are now only 14 sleeps until the first kick-off. Do it now!

Awwww. The entry forms for the 2026 Beautiful Pool are starting to trickle in. It’s nice to know you guys are still out there. I’m especially happy that there are newbies getting in on the action. Welcome Rick, Theo, and John.

For those of you who are still cogitating, here’s some stuff that might help.

Joachim Klement is an analyst with Panmure Liberum, (a UK investment bank) who has developed a model that successfully predicted the winner of every World Cup since 2014. There is a history of investment banks trying to use their “expertise” to pick WC winners. I think it generally works about as well as their ability to pick stock market winners, but that’s a discussion for another time and another blog.

In his analysis of the 2026 competition, Joachim gives a lot of information that may (or may not) be helpful to you in making your picks. For example, this table shows the likely winners of each Group:

If you want to know more about how he came up with his predictions, you can read the whole 20 page report here:

It goes without saying, or it should, that I am not endorsing Joachim’s model. Use at your own risk!

The first match is now 3 weeks away. Time to start working on your picks.

And, please, tell your friends. What’s the worst that could happen? Even if they completely crash and burn, they come last and I return their entry fee. That’s not so bad.

Stuart

PS: I edited the Rules and Regulations to include PayPal as an additional means of payment. Note too that Newbie John told me the fees to use Wise can be prohibitive if you don’t have an account. Caveat emptor.

The first game of the 2026 World Cup is a month away, and the beautifulpool.org rises from it’s slumber.

The “Rules and Regulations” page has been updated with everything you need to know to enter this year’s pool, including a link to download the entry form. It’s pretty much a rehash of previous pools, but, as they say, “why mess with success”. The link to the “Rules and Regulations” is at the top of every page on the website.

When you complete your entry form, please be on the lookout for glitches, bugs or even, yikes!, errors. FIFA keeps making the competition bigger so that they have even more opportunities to solicit bribes and/or fix the matches. That makes the entry forms a bit tricky. I think I got it right, but if you see something that doesn’t work, let me know right away so that I can fix it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The previous version of the Beautiful Pool had 39 entries, but it would be nice, don’t you think, to have even more this time. If you follow my other website ( brannan.org ) you would have seen the teaser for the Beautiful Pool that I posted in April. The key point was that you don’t need to know anything about football/soccer to join in and have fun! Many previous participants knew little to nothing about the teams and I, myself, am officially the world’s least interested soccer fan,

So, don’t be intimidated and tell everyone you know!

The Beautiful Pool Hall of Fame

I have been doing this since 2010, and here is a listing of previous winners. As you can see, people with last names starting with “T” used to do pretty well, but they have been going through a rough bit, and haven’t won anything since 2018. Too bad for them, eh?

That’s all for now. I’ll be back with updates if I think of anything to say.

Stuart