England will be knocked out of the FIFA World Cup by Germany in the quarter-finals, Bing has predicted.
Gareth Southgate’s men, who kick off their campaign on Monday against Tunisia, will once again fail to overcome their European rivals at a major tournament.
Microsoft’s search engine believes Germany, four-time winners and current holders of the trophy, will make it to the final, where they will be beaten by Brazil.
This year’s FIFA World Cup will be held in Russia and kicks off on June 14, with the hosts playing Saudi Arabia. England, in Group G, will play their first match four days later against Tunisia in Volgograd. Bing expects captain Harry Kane to lead his side to victory in that game, before also sweeping aside Panama in Nizhny Novgorod on June 24. England are then expected to lose their final group game against Belgium in Kaliningrad on June 28.
As runners-up in their group, Bing predicts England will face Colombia in the last 16. Beating their South American opponents will set up the quarter-final match against Germany, where Southgate’s team will be eliminated.
Despite the defeat, it will be England’s most successful World Cup since 2006, and a huge improvement on the last campaign, when they failed to make it past the group stages.
Manchester United star Ashley Young told the BBC that England are looking to start the tournament strongly.
“You can see in our last two games against Nigeria and Costa Rica that we’ve started brightly and on the front foot and scored early goals,” he said.
“If you start like that in tournaments it could put teams on the back foot and that’s what we’re looking to do in the first game.”
The 2018 FIFA World Cup will be the 21st tournament and the first to be held in Eastern Europe. Germany will be hoping to defend the title they won four years ago in Brazil, where they thrashed the hosts 7-1 in the semi-final.
According to Bing, there won’t be a repeat of that result in this year’s final on July 15, with the South American team lifting the trophy for a record sixth time.
