Klement never set out to become a World Cup oracle. He studied mathematics and physics at ETH Zurich, graduating with a master's in mathematics, before moving into finance, where he now works as a strategist at the investment bank Panmure Liberum.
He built the model as an exercise to show that calling a tournament winner from economic and statistical data was close to impossible.
It was a jab at what he described to BBC Sport as the hubris of economists who think they can forecast things they have no real grasp of. Then it nailed its first attempt.
"I was horrified when Germany became world champions in Brazil," he told Der Spiegel, recalling that experts had insisted no European side had ever won a World Cup staged in South America. Germany did exactly that in 2014.
He went on to call France's title in 2018 and Argentina's in 2022.
