The Athletic Launches World Cup Tracker With 48-Team Forecasts — Fox Sports World Cup
The Athletic launched its fox sports world cup tracker this week, giving readers a forecast for how each of the 48 qualified teams is likely to move through every stage of the tournament. It also lays out the most likely round of 32 matchups, current standings and other scenarios in one place.
World Cup Tracker xGC
The model behind it is Expected Goal Contribution, or xGC, a rating system built as a series of models that starts with an individual pass or dribble and builds up to players and teams. The point is to show how teams are good, not just which ones are good, and the tracker uses that framework to rate tournament strength.
Spain and France sit neck-and-neck as the top teams in the tournament. Argentina, which won the previous World Cup in 2022, is on an 18-match winning streak, but xGC still says its roster does not quite have the same threat level as Spain and France.
Spain France Argentina
Lamine Yamal leads the player list with an Expected Goal Contribution of 0.35, and Spain would be expected to beat an average team by 3.85 goals if it fielded 11 players with his strengths. Spain is currently expected to win by 1.98 goals, while Alex Baena and Marc Cucurella also rank among the top five World Cup roster players on Spain’s lists and Pedri just missed that cutoff.
France and England are also well represented among the top World Cup roster players, and the French have two of the top players on the positional lists. That leaves the tracker showing a split between public reputation and the model’s own numbers, with Argentina rated below Spain and France even after its long unbeaten run.
Norway 1998 Return
Norway is competing in its first World Cup since 1998 and sits in the back half of the FIFA rankings among the 48 qualified teams, yet xGC still places Erling Haaland among the top forwards heading into the tournament. Alexander Sorloth, Martin Odegaard and Antonio Nusa also rank favorably for Norway, giving the tracker a way to separate team standing from individual quality.
For readers, the practical use is simple: the tracker is built to compare tournament odds, bracket scenarios, standings and team strength ratings across the full field. Teams such as Spain, France, Argentina and Norway are the early reference points, but the value is in the stage-by-stage forecasts that can be checked against the bracket as the tournament unfolds.
