FIFA World Cup 2026 · Group Stage
The Group Stage
Spectrum
72 matches. 12 groups. Some were decided by a single moment — others were over before the final whistle. This is every group, ranked from the tightest three-way dogfight to the most one-sided draw, using nothing but the scorelines.
The Ranking
From dead heat to daylight
Every group's six matches, boiled down to one number: the average goal margin per game. Lower means the games stayed close. Higher means one or two teams pulled away early.
Tap any group to jump to its full breakdown.
The Spectrum, End to End
Twelve groups, one continuum
Group H played out almost like a round robin among equals — four teams separated by a single point at the mercy of a Cabo Verde back line that conceded twice all tournament. Group I was the opposite story: a group of haves and have-nots, decided well before matchday three.
Source: FIFA World Cup 2026 Dataset (Kaggle / GitHub, mominullptr) — group-stage match results, scores, and squad data for all 48 teams.
Caveat: this dataset covers a tournament dated in the system's current period (July 2026), beyond the assistant's training cutoff. It was retrieved live from Kaggle/GitHub rather than recalled from memory, and per its README is a generated/simulated dataset rather than an official FIFA feed — treat figures as illustrative, not authoritative.