Back in April, before the World Cup kicked off, I wanted to answer a question I’d been thinking about for a while: how much can you actually predict about an international tournament?
There are already plenty of World Cup models out there. Some use betting odds, Elo ratings, player values, expected goals, recent form, and dozens of other variables. I wanted to see what happened if I stripped all of that away and kept only one.
So I built the simplest model I could defend.
The only predictor was the FIFA ranking gap between two teams. If Team A was ranked much higher than Team B, the model expected a larger goal difference. That was it.
When I trained it on previous World Cups, the model explained about 19% of the variation in goal difference. That’s not an especially high number, but it was never supposed to be. If anything, the opposite was what interested me. Rankings only explained about one-fifth of what happened on the field. The other four-fifths came from everything that makes football impossible to reduce to one equation.
Before the tournament started, I remember writing that I wasn’t really interested in whether the model got every prediction right. I wanted to know where it would be wrong. Which teams would completely ignore the numbers? Which groups would become far messier than they looked on paper? And, maybe most importantly, what would those misses teach me?
Now the group stage and the Round of 32 are over, and I finally have some answers. One thing surprised me almost immediately was that model was much better at predicting groups than it was at predicting teams.
That probably sounds strange at first, but looking back it makes sense. It wasn’t especially good at saying, “this team will finish second” or “this team will finish third.” Instead, it was much better at identifying which groups were likely to become chaotic.
Take Group H. Before the tournament, I flagged it as one of the groups where the race for qualification looked much tighter than the seedings suggested. That’s almost exactly how it played out. Saudi Arabia finished with just two points and a -4 goal difference after their heavy loss to Spain, while the remaining qualification spots stayed competitive until the final matchday.
Group J ended up being one of the model’s best calls. Algeria opened the tournament with a 3-0 loss to Argentina, and after watching that first game I honestly thought they were done. Instead, they responded with two strong performances, finished third on four points, and qualified as one of the best third-place teams. Looking back, that’s exactly the kind of team I built the model to identify. Not necessarily a team that would dominate its group, but one capable of surviving it.
Group D was another interesting case. The rankings suggested the teams were much closer together than people might assume, and that uncertainty showed up almost immediately. Paraguay finished second despite entering as the lowest-ranked team in the group, Australia stayed in contention throughout, and Türkiye’s early exit ended up being one of the bigger surprises of the tournament.
Looking back, I think that’s probably the biggest lesson from the successful predictions. FIFA rankings are much better at telling us which groups are likely to be messy than they are at telling us exactly how those groups will finish.
Then Cape Verde happened.
Every World Cup seems to have one team that completely changes the conversation. It’s one of the reasons I love this tournament so much. If rankings perfectly described football, the favorites would simply take care of business every four years. Instead, there always seems to be one country that reminds everyone why we still play the games.
This year, it was Cape Verde.
They came into the tournament ranked 67th in the world and were drawn into a group with Spain, Uruguay, and Saudi Arabia. Before the tournament started, I had them finishing last. Honestly, I don’t think many people would have argued with that prediction.
Instead, they drew Spain 0-0. Then they held Uruguay to a 2-2 draw. Then they drew Saudi Arabia. Three draws. Zero losses. Second place in the group. Meanwhile Uruguay, who I expected to qualify comfortably, were heading home.
The more I watched Cape Verde, the less it felt like a lucky run. After the Spain game I thought maybe they had simply defended well for ninety minutes. After Uruguay, I started wondering whether there was something more to it. By the time they finished the group stage, it was obvious they knew exactly what kind of football they wanted to play. They defended with so much discipline that every opponent ended up playing their game instead of the other way around.
Then came Argentina.
I watched that Round of 32 match with my dad, and by halftime we both thought Argentina had figured Cape Verde out. Argentina looked sharper in the first half, they were finding more space, and we were talking about how there’s only so much a team like Cape Verde can adjust once a better team starts breaking down their defensive shape.
Then the second half completely flipped the game. By stoppage time in the second half of extra time, it felt like Cape Verde were creating every dangerous chance. Argentina held on and won 3-2, but it never felt comfortable. One of the commentators said after the match that Argentina survived more than they won, and I think that summed the game up perfectly.
Watching that match, I kept coming back to the same thought. The gap between international teams doesn’t feel as big as it used to.
That doesn’t mean FIFA rankings are useless. If I had to predict a match tomorrow, I’d still start there. But this tournament has made me wonder whether they’re becoming a weaker description of international football than they once were. Teams outside the traditional powers aren’t just happy to be here anymore. They’re organized, they’re disciplined, and increasingly they’re capable of pushing the favorites all the way to the final whistle.
When I built the model in April, I wanted to know how much FIFA rankings could explain. After watching the first few weeks of this tournament, though, I found myself wondering whether they explain less than they used to. More than that, this World Cup has gotten me thinking about international football more broadly. Are the traditional favorites really as far ahead as we think they are? Is the gap between nations getting smaller? And if so, what can we actually learn from this group stage before the knockout rounds continue?
