Article by Zack Zimbalist, Ph.D.

One of my favorite books is Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. In it, he argues that luck and randomness play a far greater role in life events than most of us humans—perhaps excepting Taleb—like to imagine. Instead, we often prefer to come up with stories to explain random events and are prone to all sorts of cognitive biases when doing so. Perhaps the most relevant for our purposes is hindsight bias, colloquially named the “knew-it-all-along” effect.

To give an example, looking back on Argentina’s 2022 World Cup triumph with the benefit of hindsight, I can easily generate a compelling story for the team’s success. It might go something like this: with Messi at his prime, a strong supporting cast, and a nearly flawless run in World Cup qualifying under a young and inspired head coach Lionel Scaloni, I knew Argentina would win! And, because of this cognitive bias, I’m also likely to overestimate my ability to predict that Portugal will win the World Cup in 2026 (for the record, I think it will, but the team would have to play lights out and be very lucky).

But this is a fool’s errand. There is so much randomness at the highest levels of international football (and in all of life) that I would be better off acknowledging that the outcome of any match, or the entire tournament, is largely down to luck and chance. Which brings me to my argument about why the new 48-team format at the upcoming World Cup is something to salivate over: it creates more opportunities for randomness, gripping uncertainty, and shock upsets.

With 16 additional teams, 40 more matches, and eight third-place finishers advancing to the Round of 32, this could be a wildly entertaining and unpredictable tournament. To the expanded-format naysayers who argue that adding 16 “weaker” teams will dilute the quality of the tournament, consider these recent examples of so-called “weaker” teams taking down giants: Saudi Arabia’s shocking win over Argentina in the group-stage opener of the last World Cup; North Macedonia knocking Italy out of World Cup qualifying in 2021; or Germany losing to Slovakia by two goals in qualifying last week. Will we see some lopsided results, like Norway’s recent 11-1 rout of Moldova? Possibly. But the underdogs and minnows deserve a shot to showcase their talents on the world stage and give their country and supporters something to cheer for. And given the key (and understated) role of randomness in influencing outcomes, the football pundits should take nothing for granted.

In IPE, this is a key point I emphasize when teaching empirical research methods, and one I strive to apply in my own research: when trying to make sense of complex phenomena, we must carefully consider alternative explanations (including the role of randomness) and reflect on our cognitive biases—especially our tendency to gravitate toward neat, causal stories.

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