England will win the World Cup after overcoming their traditional Achilles heel to beat Spain on penalties in the final, according to "lighthearted" analysis by JP Morgan.

The US bank's number crunchers have applied complex quantitative analysis to the 32 teams in the tournament in South Africa.

JP Morgan says Brazil are the strongest team but predicts they will crash out to the Netherlands after a penalty shootout in the quarter-finals.

The model sees England knocking out the Dutch in the semi-finals before conquering Spain in the final, winning in a penalty shootout.

While England's predicted victory may not be too far-fetched, even the most ardent fans of minnows Slovenia will have trouble believing JP Morgan's prediction that they will reach the semi-finals before losing to Spain.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.