I try to avoid predictions, football or otherwise, mainly because you open yourself up to ridicule.But when the bosses at The Athletic asked me to join my colleague Elias to become the ‘experts’ in our daily World Cup predictions articles, naturally I said… well, yes, actually. Hate predictions, love a challenge.Elias and I have been pitched against a different subscriber each day, an algorithm, six-year-old Wilfred and a dog called Stanley to bravely pick an outcome of each game. And with four games to go in the World Cup, we are just one correct prediction behind the ‘Algo’, who leads the way.OverallaccuracyCorrectpicksBeststreakThe algorithm69%7014TA experts68%6911Wilfred (age 6)66%677Reader picks60%615Stanley the dog40%414However, away from our daily preview articles and over in The Athletic’s interactive soccer Pick’ems game, our readers have been showing us all how it’s done.The Pick’Ems game differs to our daily article in that anyone can play (and more than 216,000 have) and the table is ordered by ‘Best Streak’, which is the number of correct predictions made in a row.And as we approach the semifinals, there are three readers in particular setting up a grandstand finish to the Pick’Ems game worthy of the World Cup itself.