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Dubai, June 15 (PTI): An Indian and his classmate in Dubai say they know who’s going to win the World Cup, thanks to their artificial intelligence World Cup predictor.

Imran Fanaswala and his Iranian classmate Yashar Fasihnia, both computer science students at the American University in Sharjah, have developed the Fifa Intelligence (Fifi) model, which predicts Brazil will beat Italy in the final of the World Cup on July 9 and bag the trophy for the sixth time.

The students spent weeks collating data and developing profiles based on head-to-head results. The statistical model forecasts the winner of each match from the league stages to the final.

“The first stage was gathering a lot of information. We went back 20 years and collected all sorts of info about the teams ? things like team performance, score and scorers,” Gulf News quoted Fanaswala as saying.

They then fed the information into Fifi. And who is destined to lift the trophy?

“We think Brazil and Italy will be in the final and Brazil will win,” said Fasihnia, who will, however, support Iran. “One semifinal will feature the Netherlands and Italy and the other England and Brazil.”

One of the quarterfinals will see England beat old rivals Argentina.

Professor Joachim Diederich, who oversaw the project, said that according to statistical tests, Fifi operates with 83 per cent accuracy. “Given the limited amount of time they had to complete this project, that figure is very high.”

“If we had more time and manpower we would have liked to research things like pitch condition, temperature, age of players, experience and many other variables. Then we could be even more accurate,” Fasihnia said.

But Fifi’s prediction doesn’t bode well for Diederich’s Germany.

Fifi predicts the host country will lose to the Netherlands in the quarterfinals.