Who has the hardest schedule?
48 teams. 16 cities across three countries. Almost 4,000 km from Vancouver to Mexico City. This dashboard quantifies the travel and logistics edge baked into each team's group-stage schedule.
⚽ Opening Weekend
8 matches · 3 days · 0/8 played
United States
Paraguay
By the numbers
South Africa
New Zealand
Colombia
Algeria
Argentina ArgentinaThree different stories
Start exploring
Edge Index
→Leaderboard ranking all 48 teams by a composite of travel km, time-zone shifts, venue moves, altitude swings, heat exposure, and rest gaps. Sort by any column.
Strength of Schedule
→Opponent difficulty: avg Elo of group opponents, the Group of Death, and a combined travel-plus-opponents leaderboard.
Predictions
→10,000-simulation Monte Carlo of the group stage. Probabilities of topping the group, advancing to R32, and expected points per team. Auto-updates as scores fill in.
Schedule
→All 72 group-stage matches, grouped by date. 72 fixtures · scores fill in as matches play.
Venues
→Interactive map of the 16 host stadiums. Altitude, expected heat, roof type. Mexico City sits at 2,240 m.
How the difficulty scores work
The Edge Index ranks all 48 teams on travel difficulty using 9 factors: total kilometres flown, time-zone shifts, number of venue changes, altitude swings, expected heat, climate variance, rest days between matches, circadian penalty (kickoff time vs. body clock), and host advantage. Each factor is normalised across the field; higher score = harder schedule (0–100 scale).
Opponent Difficulty is the average Elo rating of each team's three group opponents, also normalised 0–100. The Combined Difficulty averages the two — harsh travel plus tough opponents equals the toughest road.
Advancement probabilities come from a Monte Carlo simulation of 10,000 tournaments: every match is sampled from a Poisson goal model (mean driven by Elo difference); real results replace simulated ones as games are played.