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Machine Learning in Football · 08

The price of a starting XI

Transfer markets are a crowd-sourced strength rating: thousands of analysts and fans haggling over what a player is worth. Add up a nation's best eleven and you get a quick, brutal read on the gap between the favourites and the field. Here's every 2026 squad priced by Transfermarkt — and every group game as a value mismatch you can open up. Browse the fixtures, click any match, see the two XIs side by side.

Part I

The value ladder

What every squad is worth

Total market value of each 26-player squad, richest first. A handful of European and South American nations carry most of the money; the gap from top to bottom spans two orders of magnitude. Bars are the full squad; the fixtures below compare best XIs.

Part II

The fixtures

Every group game, priced

The 72 group-stage matches, by date. Each bar splits the combined best-XI value between the two sides — the more lopsided the bar, the bigger the gap on paper. Click a match to open both starting elevens, most valuable first.