No matter how we slice it, the numbers suggest that European Countries do not perform as effectively as their Non-European counterparts when the World Cup Finals are held in South America.

Some reasons for this?

Off the top of my head: hot weather, unfamiliar surroundings, homesickness, lack of familiar/regular diet, hostile environment, hostile fans. But the biggest reason may be lack of pressure.

It seems blasphemous to suggest that there is lack of pressure for a European to win a World Cup since it seems like every living organism in Europe eats, sleeps, and breathes soccer (sorry, my bad, “football”).

But consider the fact that all four of these World Cup Finals were played before the technology boom that we experienced starting in the 80s. The technology boom that connected our world in a way that we have never experienced. Back in 1930 or 1950, fans in Europe didn’t even know about the results until the next day or week. Certainly not the immediacy we have today.

The lack of pressure is also evident in the fact that SEVERAL European countries SKIPPED the tournament for logistical reasons. Can you imagine if England withdrew from this year’s World Cup because they complained about the travel distance? The riots and protests that would ensue would put the Occupiers of Wall Street to shame.

While football was important back then, it hasn’t become the religion it is today for the common man. This lack of pressure has led to underperformance of every European team in South America and the 1-1-12 record in knockout rounds against Non-European Teams.

So what does that mean for this year? Well we’ve already seen Spanish and British casualties in the Group Stage. Can we project through a linear regression the number of wins for European Teams against Non-European Teams in the Knockout Rounds? The answer is we cannot, since there are not enough wins to create a proper regression. So, instead, let’s consider the number of goals they’ll score and concede in a knockout game.

If we were to use this data to predict the 15th game, Europeans would lose 1.0774 to 0.6366. Obviously that is not possible, but based on the analysis, a 13th lost to a Non-European team is likely. The good sign? The goals against for a dropping at a higher rate than the goals for (basically constant at 1 goal per game). However, the drop was predictable, given the high scoring, lopsided affairs we had back in 1930 and 1950. One can argue this is the Non-European teams regressing back to the mean, not a sign of European teams figuring out how to defend Non-European teams on South American soil.

When doing statistical analysis of this nature, we always have to ask the question: is this information reliable? According to the R-squared values for both regressions (0.13 and 0.32), they are not. It would appear the regression is not linear. We can fix this with the removal of outliers or fitting a higher order model. However, even lacking a strong fit, it is clear with this analysis that European teams need to score more goals and prevent more goals against, in order to end their drought in South America.

What does this all mean for Brazil 2014? It could mean anything, really. People change, circumstances change, styles of play change. Spain’s elimination in my opinion was largely due to their inability to evolve as a team (sticking to the tiki-taka style despite the whole world catching up and surpassing them) and their age.

It’s hard to rely on information from 30-50 years ago and come up with a logical conclusion as to how the games will play out this time around. As a fan who picked Germany to win, I am cautiously optimistic about their chances of ending Europe’s drought after their 4-0 win against Portgual (edit: the 2-2 draw to Ghana was less than pleasing). The Netherlands have also looked promising to this point so there’s plenty of reason to believe 2014 will be different for Europe.

But the numbers exist for a reason, a reason that was exemplified perfectly by Spain and England (and, to a lesser extent, Portugal). Let’s also not discount the sheer force South America has been in the tournament, with Messi dominating for Argentina, Uruguay beating England, Chile upsetting Spain, and Brazil being Brazil. Europe will have an uphill climb if it wants to win in 2014.

Anyway it plays out, as a fan, I can’t wait to watch.