In the real world, confirmation bias can be a terrible thing. We seek information that confirms what we already believed, and we use it to craft a flawed or damaging worldview.
That’s bad in the real world, but in the soccer world, confirmation bias can be lots of fun.
We enter a given season with all sorts of suspicions and assumptions, and we run with bold overreactions the moment reality even slightly backs them up. And sometimes we’re even correct!
Each year I come up with a list of bold predictions, heavy on quick overreactions, a couple of weeks into the soccer season, and damned if half of them don’t always seem to come true. Looking back at last year’s list, Arsenal indeed won the Premier League when Manchester City and Liverpool couldn’t get out of their own way, Bayer Leverkusen indeed failed to finish in the Bundesliga top four, Como indeed qualified for European ball for the first time, Wolves and West Ham indeed both got relegated from the Premier League, and — honestly the most impressive and history-defying prediction on the list — Rangers indeed finished outside of Scotland’s top two.
Sure, other predictions failed; Eintracht Frankfurt swooned instead of surging, and Villarreal’s Nicolas Pépé didn’t have a career year (though he did still enjoy his best season of the 2020s), but a “50% success rate was still pretty fantastic for what felt like a few reasonably bold swings.
Now it’s time to step to the plate again. Based on a small handful of matchdays — three in LaLiga, one in the Bundesliga and two in most other leagues — let’s see if confirmation bias can win the day once again!
Here are eight reasonably bold predictions based on unreasonably tiny sample sizes.
Michael Olise will win the 2027 Ballon d’Or
It’s fair to assume Harry Kane will win the 2026 Ballon d’Or. There could still be a surprise twist, but Kane seemed to split the difference the best between an excellent club season and strong play in the summer’s World Cup. Lamine Yamal was very quiet in the latter (albeit while winning the tournament), and other potential favorites like Rodri and Kylian Mbappé disappointed during the club season. (Well, Mbappe scored a million goals, but his team disappointed, and his refusal to defend didn’t help.)
But nothing that happens from this point forward will impact that race much, so instead let’s go ahead and give out next year’s award!
This will be the year of Michael Olise. And considering how ridiculous he was last season — 25 goals and 28 assists in all competitions (including the FIFA Club World Cup), plus seven assists in eight World Cup matches — that’s a pretty scary thought. But even with a relatively short post-World Cup break, he’s been ruthless thus far in 2026-27.
In Bayern Munich’s 2-1 Franz Beckenbauer Supercup victory at Borussia Dortmund, he assisted the first goal and scored the game-winner with an unfair acceleration and a preposterous, tightly-angled flick.
https://x.com/FCBayern/status/2091837133837222344
In Bayern’s Bundesliga-opening 5-1 trouncing of VfB Stuttgart — who should be pretty damn strong this season — the game was seemingly tied until Olise broke open and scored while seemingly running at half speed. Stuttgart’s will immediately broke, and the rout was on.
Olise is a top-five player in the world in terms of passing, chance creation and ground duels. He honestly has a case to be considered the best player in the world at the moment and win this year’s Ballon d’Or. But even if the buzz didn’t come around like it should have, it will become impossible to ignore over the next year.
Brentford to the Champions League
When the transfer window closed on Tuesday, it wrapped up the most genuinely perplexing and out-of-control run of Premier League spending we’ve ever seen.
Eight teams spent at least €220 million in transfer fees (including freshly promoted Ipswich!), and six more spent at least €124 million. Teams constantly spent time seemingly bidding against themselves, and players with Premier League experience were given downright shocking valuations: Manchester City brought over Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández and Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson for a combined €280 million! Tottenham Hotspur spent €295 million for Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali, West Ham’s Mateus Fernandes and Manchester City’s disappointing Sávio! Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers went to Chelsea for €138 million! Brighton’s Carlos Baleba went to Manchester United for €75.9! Even Chelsea bust Liam Delap went to Forest for €52.5 million!
None of this is rational! And after a combined outlay of more than €4 billion — with a B! — in transfer fees, it felt like about five teams had actually improved. But in a world of irrational behavior and inefficient spending, clubs with an actual plan and identity can continue to thrive.
Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford finished sixth, eighth and ninth, respectively, in last year’s Premier League table, and while Bournemouth lost an excellent coach (Andoni Iraola) and Brighton lost starters to both Manchester United (Baleba) and Tottenham (Jan Paul van Hecke), Brentford managed to not only keep the band mostly together — the only substantive loss was veteran midfielder Jordan Henderson to Chelsea — but also made one of the most exciting midfield additions in the league by bringing in midfielder Mamadou Sangare from Ligue 1’s Lens.
It probably shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that while so many of the league’s big spenders have looked discombobulated out of the gate, Brentford’s looked fantastic. They humiliated Spurs, 3-0, to start the Premier League season, then torched Birmingham 6-1 in the first round of the EFL Cup. Their perfect start was marred by a late Dominic Calvert-Lewin goal as they settled for a 1-1 draw at Leeds, but Leeds might not drop many points at home this season, and after two matches Brentford rank second in the league in xG differential (+3.5) and third in goal differential (+3).
Their next seven league matches include visits from Sunderland and Nottingham Forest and a trip to Hull City. They also welcome in-transition Chelsea and Liverpool teams to Brentford Community Stadium. If the Bees continue playing well, they could rack up a stellar point total that would place them in the hunt for a Champions League berth all season. After top-half-of-the-table finishes in three of the last four seasons, the 2026-27 campaign might be offering them a chance to make their next big move upward.
It’s Inter vs. AS Roma for the Scudetto
No, it’s not a bold prediction to say that last year’s Serie A winner, Inter Milan, will be competing for the title again this season. They won last year’s race by 11 points, and they seemingly brought in more quality than they lost in the transfer window. They’re going to be excellent.
However, it’s a bit of a risk picking Roma to rival them. They haven’t won the Scudetto since 2000-01, and they haven’t finished even second since 2016-17. They finished between fifth and seventh for seven straight seasons before prising Gian Piero Gasperini away from Atalanta and hopping up to third last season.
With another offseason to get used to Gasperini’s system and with a delightful infusion of youth, Roma have begun this season in a different gear, stomping both Lecce and Fiorentina by matching 4-0 margins. Former Benfica attacking midfielder Rodrigo Mora (19 years old) has a goal and two chances created in 84 minutes, and right midfielder Emanuele Lulli (18), an academy product, has played every minute thus far and has created three chances. Forward Donyell Malen, added permanently after a successful loan stint last season, has five goals already, and veteran Paulo Dybala has three assists from eight chances created.
Roma are creating chancesthe league in progressive carries (Dybala and midfielder Bryan Cristante are third and fourth in the league, respectively), progressive passes (Dybala, Cristante, defender Mario Hermoso and midfielder Moussa Kone are all eighth or better) and line-breaking passes (Hermoso is fourth, Cristante sixth)
It’s going to take a well-oiled machine to challenge Inter, but Roma have one of Europe’s better overachiever coaches and are benefiting at the moment from both excellent veteran play and a youth infusion. They finished last season in great form and have started 2026-27 even better.
Crystal Palace are going down
After a bright start to the 2025-26 season, Crystal Palace fell into a funk in league play. They continued to play well in the Conference League, eventually defeating Rayo Vallecano in the final, but from Dec. 8 on, they generated the third-worst point total in the league, with the third-worst goal differential. Sure, to some degree you could blame their league form on their Conference League focus, but they finished only six points outside of the relegation zone, and then they lost coach Oliver Glasner and starters Maxence Lacroix (Chelsea) and Daniel Muñoz (Forest).
I didn’t love the club’s transfer work, and when Ryan O’Hanlon and I were putting together our preseason EPL rankings, I voted Palace 17th. I almost predicted them to get relegated.
Two matches in, it feels like 17th might have been optimistic. Palace came out firing in their opening match at Everton, attempting five shots worth 1.4 xG in the first 38 minutes. In the last 142 minutes, however, they were outscored by a 6-1 margin, allowing 30 shots worth 3.1 xG, creating 15 shots worth 1.2 xG and scoring only on an own goal.
Three poor halves of ball obviously isn’t much — manager Pierre Sage and some new young pieces could eventually figure out their identity and stabilize. But I’m allowing myself to succumb to confirmation bias, and I think Palace could be in trouble this season, especially considering they’ll be trying to figure themselves out while taking on at least eight Europa League matches.
RB Leipzig will set a club-record point total
RB Leipzig’s product seems reliant on churn. Heading into the 2023-24 season, they lost stars Josko Gvardiol, Dominik Szoboszlai and Christopher Nkunku each to big-money Premier League clubs, but their Bundesliga point total remained almost exactly the same and they reached the same round in the Champions League. The next year, they lost only one star (Dani Olmo) and plummeted to seventh. They sold away three stars for a combined €176.5m the next summer and leapt back up to third place.
This past summer, they lost winger Yan Diomande earlier than they planned, with Real Madrid laying down €125 million for his services. That was the only huge move they made, but they also lost veteran goalkeeper Peter Gulasci and midfielder Xaver Schlager, and officially sold forward Loïs Openda‘s rights to Juventus after a loan.
Naturally, they began the season with a 6-0 win in the first round of the DFB Pokal and a 3-0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Bundesliga’s first matchday. Six players already have at least two combined goals and assists, a list that includes veterans like defender Willi Orbán and utility wide man Ridle Baku, new midfield addition Rocco Reitz (from Gladbach) and three 21-and-under players (forward Tidiam Gomis, winger Antonio Nusa, playmaker Ezechiel Banzuzi).
They obviously haven’t played a good opponent yet, but they also haven’t gotten many contributions from new players beyond Reitz yet, either. (Among the newcomers: former Burnley defender Maxime Estève, former Chelsea forward Marc Guiu and the returning Nkunku.)
RBL produced between 65 and 67 points in seven of their first 10 seasons. But with teams like Bayer Leverkusen and Eintracht Frankfurt appearing to be undergoing further transition early this season and VfB Stuttgart looking more flawed than expected in the season opener against Bayern, there’s an open lane to a pretty high point total. I really like Borussia Dortmund’s summer additions — though I hate that fun addition Giannis Konstantelias tore his ACL after playing so tantalizingly well early on — but even if Bayern are great and BVB are good, I’m betting this is a big season in Leipzig.
Jack Hinshelwood will start for England in the next year
For all the hype surrounding promising young players these days, Jack Hinshelwood kind of snuck up on us. He didn’t come to Brighton after some huge season abroad or in the English Championship; instead, he signed with their youth academy at age 7 and worked his way up. Injuries slowed his move up the ladder, but he showed promise as both an interventionist and an occasional attacker, and since the calendar flipped to 2026, he’s moved up the pitch and, from a No. 10 type of role, has become Brighton’s best attacker.
Since Jan. 1, Hinshelwood leads his team in goals (five), shot attempts (34) and xG in open play (5.3). The former right back and defensive midfielder has unlocked Brighton’s play: In the 16 Premier League games he’s started in this span, they’ve averaged 1.69 points per game; in the five he hasn’t, they’ve averaged 0.8.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t escaped the wrath of the injuries god just yet — after a brilliant performance in Brighton’s season-opening stomping of Aston Villa, he suffered an injury in training, and it kept him out of their wild 4-3 loss to Chelsea. It’s unclear how much time he might miss, but if he can remain in the lineup for most of the season, he might not leave England head coach Thomas Tuchel an option but to give him a call-up.
Alavés and Paris FC will play in Europe next season
In 2000-01, after a sixth-place finish in LaLiga, Deportivo Alaves made a blessed and memorable UEFA Cup run before succumbing to Liverpool in an epic final. By 2003, they were relegated, and they’ve spent only 11 of the last 24 seasons in the top division. Paris FC, meanwhile, have never played in Europe and just began only their third season of French top-division football in the last 50 years.
I love what I’ve seen from both of these teams thus far. In a reasonably slow league, Quique Sánchez Flores’ Alaves have committed to a direct identity, keeping defenders behind the ball and erupting forward. It’s earned them wins over Getafe and Villarreal and an unfortunate draw with Rayo Vallecano (xG: Alaves 2.0, Rayo 0.4).
Alaves are defending like crazy, but they’re also sixth in shot attempts and fifth in goals. Veteran center-backs Nahuel Tenaglia and Jonny Otto have been flawless, and 33-year-old forward Mariano Díaz has two goals and two assists. They aren’t deploying a new strategy, but they’re executing a tried-and-true one quite well.
Paris are in the same boat: Unbeaten with a dominant win (3-0 over Nice) and a dominant draw (0-0 vs. Troyes). With a new coach (former Chelsea head man Liam Rosenior) and five exciting newcomers — including 26-year-old forward Lassine Sinayoko (one goal, five chances created) and 19-year-old super sub Patrick Zabi — Les Parisiens are first in the league in goal differential and third in xG differential.
Yes, it’s just two results, but they’re legit results. The club is investing — only PSG and Strasbourg spent more on transfers this summer among Ligue 1 clubs — and the squad looks strong. And up in UEFA competitions next season
Either Spurs or “Italian Spurs” (Fiorentina) will go down
Olley can’t make sense of Spurs’ move for Mudryk
I’m sure I angered any number of people with that comparison, but hear me out:
In the all-time Serie A table, Fiorentina sit fifth, well behind Juventus, Inter, AC Milan and Roma but well ahead of pretty much everyone else. They’ve spent only three seasons outside of Serie A since the 1930s, but they haven’t won a title since the 1960s.
In the all-time Premier League table, Tottenham Hotspur sit fifth, far behind Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea but comfortably ahead of everyone else but Manchester City, who will probably catch them in the next couple of years. They’ve spent only one season outside of the English top division since the 1940s, but they haven’t won a title since the 1960s.
Their résumés are remarkably similar, and they both enjoyed recent success in minor UEFA tournaments: Spurs won the Europa League in 2025, and Fiorentina reached the Conference League finals in 2023 and 2024. And they both absolutely stunk last season.
Spurs famously came within a whisker of relegation last year and have, incredibly, finished 17th in the Premier League for two straight seasons. They overpaid dramatically for midfield upgrades like Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes this summer, but they still made upgrades, and it was fair to predict that, with coach Roberto De Zerbi leading the way, they would jump back into the top half of the table this year. Fiorentina didn’t have the same type of money to spend, but after needing a strong late run — one defeat in their last 11 Serie A matches — to escape the relegation fight, they laid down between €10-26m for seven different players and landed an aggressive number of loanees.
Spurs and Fiorentina both entered the season with huge redemption hopes. And in four combined matches, they’ve been outscored by a combined 12-0. The next point or goal for either will be the first. There’s definitely some misfortune in these numbers — they’ve combined to attempt 60 shots worth 4.2 xG and haven’t put any in the net; even if you’re awful at finishing, you won’t remain quite that awful. But even looking at xG differential (minus-2.9 for Spurs, minus-1.7 for Fiorentina), these teams have faceplanted out of the gates.
Fiorentina could be saved by the simple fact that a lot of Serie A’s lesser teams have also started poorly: Monza, Venezia, Parma and Genoa also have zero points through two matches. But the vibes could get very toxic very quickly, and aside from perhaps veteran goalie David de Gea or defender Marin Pongracic, the roster doesn’t have a surefire veteran core to steer them out of the skid.
I’m guessing Spurs will end up having too much raw talent and will eventually rally. I’m less sure about their Italian counterparts.
Source: www.espn.com
