Machine Learning in Football
The football world, explored.
A growing set of small, self-contained data explorations built from 150 years of international results — each one a single question, taken as far as the data will support. Start anywhere.
The road to the final
Thirty-two teams left. The frozen Dixon-Coles model reads every knockout tie — each side's chance of going through — and rolls the whole draw forward forty-thousand times for the title odds. A clickable two-sided bracket, refreshed daily.
Explore →The shape of the football world
Every nation a node, every match an edge. Six blocs that barely touch, a small world two matches wide, and the handful of teams holding it together.
Explore →Every match, predicted — then marked
A Dixon-Coles goals model rates every World Cup match as probabilities, frozen the day before kickoff — then grades itself against the actual results. A second tab opens the engine right up: the team ratings map and a live, step-by-step anatomy of one prediction.
Explore →The 2026 Travel Burden Index
Three host countries, sixteen venues, brutal distances. A from-scratch index of every team's kilometres, time-zones, altitude and rest — drag the weights and watch the ranking re-sort live.
Explore →The league dependency map
Where all 1,246 squad players earn their living — a Sankey of nations into leagues, a domestic-dependency stat per team, and the unglamorous entity-resolution that makes it trustworthy.
Explore →Who plays like whom?
A per-90 fingerprint for every coverable squad player, embedded by position into a map you can explore. Pick a star and meet their five closest stylistic matches — similarity measured in full feature space, not on the map.
Explore →A coin flip that isn't
Shooter picks a side, keeper picks a side — every World Cup shootout kick as a 3×3 payoff matrix, with the keeper's actual dive on each one. A mixed-strategy equilibrium test, the abandoned centre, and a playable keeper game.
Explore →Can a hobbyist model beat the closing line?
A Monte-Carlo model's probability is frozen before each kickoff and scored against the bookmakers' de-vigged odds — Brier, calibration, and the gap between them. Losing to the market is the expected, publishable result. Live once odds capture is running.
Coming soonThe price of a starting XI
Every 2026 squad priced by Transfermarkt, then every group game as a value mismatch — click a fixture to open both best elevens, most valuable first. A crowd-sourced strength prior, upfront about who it can and can't put a number on.
Explore →Today's games, opened up
The fixtures on today — or the next ones up — as full previews: the model's call, both value-ranked elevens on the pitch, the managers, recent form and where each team's tournament stands. Live through the group stage.
Explore →The strongest teams watching from home
Forty-eight places, and Italy still isn't one of them. The biggest absentees ranked by world ranking, squad value, Elo and World Cup pedigree — and the cheaper squads that booked their place ahead of them.
Explore →