This group bears much more resemblance to Spain’s brutally efficient international football than the flair displayed by Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Co. in Cups past. Incredibly talented youngsters like Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino will be watching from the stands as Scolari has instead opted for the monosyllabic power of Fred, Jo, and Hulk.

(OK, and Neymar. There’s going to be some flair on display when Neymar is around, even if it’s just from his hair.)

Brazil’s squad is good, but there are a number of other contenders for the “best team” label at the start of the tournament. Spain are somewhat transitional, edging away from the aging Barcelona core that brought them the last three major world soccer titles (Euro 2008, World Cup 2010 and Euro 2012), but with that pedigree, it’s almost impossible to deny that they are probably the better team right now. Similar arguments could be made about Germany and Argentina, in that they seem at least as deep and talented as the Seleção.

So if that’s the case, why do the betting odds have Brazil as clear favorites to win the event? The secret lies in home-field advantage.

Since 1930 there have been 19 World Cups, six of which have been won by the home nation, and in all of which the home nation has performed very well. France in 1998 is the last host to actually lift the cup, but even relative soccer minnows like the United States (made Round of 16 in 1994), South Korea (made the semifinals in 2002) and South Africa (the first host not to make the knockout stage, but still overachieved with four points in group play) have utilized home-field advantage to their advantage. Hosting the tournament gives any team a much better chance of performing well, and if the team is talented enough to begin with, a better chance to win it all.

How big is home-field advantage in a tournament, though? It’s difficult to calculate because there are many fewer games compared to standard league play, and even the home team changes stadiums for each match. That said, we know in league play, homefield advantage is worth anywhere from around 0.3 up to as much as 0.75 goals per match, depending on stadium design and altitude.

Research has suggested that bigger, louder crowds that are close to the pitch have a bigger impact on the game (with a large portion of that involving referee bias in favor of the home team), as does playing at altitude when your opponents aren’t used to it. This is why Mexico tends to play their most important matches in the 105,000-seat Estadio Azteca, situated more than 7,000 feet above sea level, and why “El Tri” did well in both the 1970 and 1986 Cups hosted in their country. FIFA actually went as far as to try ban teams from playing matches at extreme elevations (hello, La Paz, Bolivia) before backing down.

High altitude won’t be a factor in Brazil, but will the crowds (by forcing favorable referee decisions) be able to impact the games for the hosts?

Right now, this is a bit of a wild card. South American crowds can be incredibly fierce, but this World Cup may have a unique environment. The unrest in the population due to both World Cup development projects and the forthcoming 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro is unlike anything at previous World Cup venues. Massive protests have been a regular thing for more than a year, and are still ongoing. Brazilians will assuredly be rooting for their team, but the context around the event is anything but overtly supportive.

That said, a friend who happens to be a professional gambler said last week that he believes Brazil will enjoy the largest home-field advantage of any World Cup host ever, so the actual advantage people believe will be in play for Brazil is varying wildly. How strong it is will significantly impact the expectations of a Brazilian triumph.

For example, let’s take Germany, an opponent that would be evenly matched against Brazil on a neutral field. We’ll also include a generic expectation of 2.25 total goals, so we can include some likelihood of a draw. If the match were to take place on an island in the Bahamas during a combination vacation/soccer scrimmage in paradise, you could expect the probabilities to look something like this:

Brazil Win: 34.7%
Germany Win: 34.7%
Draw: 30.6%

Now move the match to Brazil during this World Cup, and here’s what would happen at three different levels of home-field advantage:

Example 1: Home Field Advantage = 0.3 goals

Brazil Win: 43.6%
Germany Win: 26.5%
Draw: 29.9%

Example 2: Home Field Advantage = 0.5 goals

Brazil Win: 50.0%
Germany Win: 21.3%
Draw: 28.7%

Example 3: Home Field Advantage = 0.75 goals

Brazil Win: 57.1%
Germany Win: 16.1%
Draw: 26.8%

As you can see, homefield advantage creates a fairly large swing in how often you would expect Brazil to win against an evenly matched opponent. The expectation for total goals in the match doesn’t change (which is why the odds on a draw don’t move very much), but depending on the crowd environment, Brazil would be expected to take more and more of the scoring away from Germany.

In this example, differing levels of support add as much as an additional 13.5 percent to Brazil’s win odds, meaning for every eight matches played, Brazil would win more than one extra time. That’s a huge difference when you need to win four knockout matches in a row against good opponents. This is something that you might care a little bit about when filling out your World Cup pools, but something that sportsbooks have to care an awful lot about because it has a massive impact on where they set their lines for what is unequivocally the biggest betting bonanza in the world.

So, is Brazil the best team at the World Cup? Probably not, but the fact that the World Cup is taking place in Brazil will cause the odds to swing in their direction for every single match they play. The more important question is the one posed by at least one professional gambler: Will Brazil have the greatest home-field advantage in the history of World Cups?

We’re about to find out, and the answer to that will answer a lot of other questions about the month ahead.

@mixedknuts is the Co-founder and Editor of StatsBomb.com and writes about soccer for The Daily Mirror in London.