For those who missed it, we looked back at the Mark My Words thread earlier this week - but that was vibes, and this is data. With the silliness of the World Cup out of the way - and the real sport of /r/soccer karma farmers racing to post the biggest Romano "Here We Go'"s hotting up - there is no time like the present to turn to the past. Yes, let's throw back to last August, when nearly 600 of /r/soccer's finest put their heads together to predict how we thought the 2025/26 season might go - in the official Predictions Survey. The full results can be viewed in a single Imgur album, here (... But below is the TL;DR, where I've pulled out the main headlines of how right and wrong we were) The results Part 1 - the biggest prizes The Men’s World Cup We got this one right - Spain's 35.4% vote share leading the way, whilst beaten finalists/disgraces to football Argentina got just 6% of the vote. The Men’s AFCON /r/soccer chose Morocco... I'll leave it up to you whether we called it. The UEFA Champions League Calamity. Just 4.2% backed PSG to defend their crown - Liverpool (30.9%) and Barcelona (26.1%) the heavy /r/soccer favourites The Men’s Ballon d’Or Easy - 67.5% chose Dembele, and were proved right. The Women’s Ballon d’Or It was controversial, but /r/soccer correctly predicted Aitana Bonmati made it three in a row. Part 2 - Major European domestic leagues Note: I have selected just the most interesting predictions, rather than including every result The English Premier League Champions ... Yeah nobody so that coming. More than half thought Liverpool would defend their title, and just 16.5% correctly predicted Arsenal to be champions. The top 4 /r/soccer predicted: Liverpool (97.4%) Man City (97.2%) Arsenal (92.1%) Chelsea (88.6%) So yeah - Chelsea really did underachieve. The relegated teams The promoted teams were picked to go straight back down: Burnley (76.9%) Sunderland (59.7%) Leeds (57.2%) There was a big drop off to Wolves and Brentford - but they were close as next favourites with 30.3% and 28.9%. West Ham were nowhere to be seen. La Liga Champions Barcelona were the overwhelming favourites with 67.1%, and this prediction came true. The top 4 Goes without saying that the big 3 would get there - but /r/soccer's pick for fourth actually came 12th. Shocker. Real Madrid (89.7%) Atletico Madrid (60.5%) Barcelona (58.7%) Athletic Bilbao (44.1%) The German Bundesliga Champions Unsurprisingly, that is Bayern Munich with a massive 93.3% of the vote - Dortmund were second, with just 3.9%. The top 4 Stuttgart nowhere to be seen - but at least /r/soccer picked RB as next favourite. Bayern Munich (99.3%) Borussia Dortmund (92.4%) Bayer Leverkusen (66.1%) Eintracht Frankfurt (53.2) RB Leipzig were next, with a 44.7% "yes" vote. Italian Serie A Champions Napoli edged the prediction with 39% vs Inter's 32% - so it wasn't a shocking shout. The Capocannoniere (Golden Boot) winner 29.3% correctly picking Lautaro to win the Capocannoniere isn't that exciting - but 17.2% picking Lukaku (who scored 1 goal in Serie A) is a bit sad. Yes, I know he was injured. Selected other European league champions French Ligue 1 - champions PSG got 92.3% of the vote. Dutch Eredivisie - champions PSV got nearly half the vote. Portuguese Primeira Liga - over half voted for Benfica, and only 27% the actual winners, Porto. Belgian Pro League - 44.2% were indeed correct to pick Club Brugge as champions. Scottish Premiership - 85.9% predicted champions Celtic to win... but fair to say it was a bit more complicated than that. English Championship - the Championship is a difficult league to predict, but this was perhaps /r/soccer's worst prediction. Leicester were /r/soccer's champions - and instead got relegated. The actual winner's - Frank Lampard's Coventry City - got less than 5% of the vote (less than Wrexham). Part 3 - wildcard predictions This was probably the most fun part of the survey, on some miscellaneous hot topics... Antonio Conte lasting the season as Napoli manager… 70.5% predicted the hotheaded Italian would last the season - and as he left at the end of it, he sort of did. First English Premier League manager to be sacked… /r/soccer's pick, Daniel Farke, is actually still in his job. The first manager to be sacked was actually Nuno Espirito Santo - who wasn't even in the top 10. Prospects of Premier League strikers… Spicy. Over 50% thought Gyokeres would. be the best of the headline Premier League striker signings. I thought this was Arsenal fan bias at the time... and it probably still was, but they were proved right. Champions League dark horses... Tottenham were /r/soccer's dark horses - and memorably lost in the round of 16. Ligue 1 games PSG will lose… Most of /r/soccer thought PSG would lose only 2 or 3 games - they actually lost 6, but in fairness they did basically phone in the league. The host nation who goes furthest at the 2026 World Cup… In the end, all got to the round of 16, so this was a bit pointless. Most likely to occur at the 2026 World Cup… Perhaps my favourite part of the survey. Of potential events, /r/soccer deemed the order of likelihood thus: Donald Trump photo-bombs the trophy lift A player is denied entry to the USA A match is suspended due to anti-Trump protests A team refuses to play And of the four, I'd argue we got 1 and a half. Obviously Trump tried to steal the limelight - and a player did not get denied entry, but a referee did, and Iran came pretty close, too. So overall, for /r/soccer's ability to predict the future? Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit.   submitted by   /u/AnnieIWillKnow [link]   [comments]