FIFA World Cup 2010 Predictions: David Villa's Missed Penalty Changes The Game

The Half Volley World Cup Predictions Challenge is pitting four different forecasters against each other in a bid to see who is the best at predicting the results of the 2010 World Cup.

The expert, the bookies, the public and the computer game are all casting their eye over the group stage, with the results logged on Half Volley.

For more on the challenge and the leaderboard, go to our main World Cup Predictions Challenge page .

What a relief. A few World Cup results we can rely on and some valuable points for our predictors.

A routine win for Spain and a spectacular win for our noisy neighbours Portugal, along with an expected Chile victory over Honduras, offered plenty of chances to reap in the big points.

A chance that was taken up by all of our competitors—except FIFA 10.

The computer game followed up its best ever run since the start of the World Cup with a dismal run of freak results that has given them no chance.

FIFA thought Honduras would pick up a victory over Spain, and North Korea would stun the footballing world with a 2-0 victory over Portugal. Not so.

This has dropped the PS3 title back below the expert, who had the correct results for all three of Monday’s games.

In fact, FIFA has now gone on a run of seven incorrect predictions, a sequence that is second only to the Public’s 10 matches without a point between Greece vs. Nigeria on Thursday and Italy vs. New Zealand on Sunday.

Perhaps David Villa should consider our predictors before he next takes a penalty, though.

If Villa had put away the spot-kick for his hat-trick, our expert Sarah Shephard and the Public would have had a perfect score to take home. As it was, the bookies took the green square and maximum points.

Here’s the results and leaderboard after Day 11 of competition:

Up for prediction tomorrow is the first of the group deciders—Mexico vs. Uruguay and France vs. South Africa, followed by Greece vs. Argentina and Nigeria vs. South Korea.

Find out how our competitors fared on Half Volley, and remember, you can see all the results from the tournament so far on our World Cup Predictions Challenge main page.