A match-by-match data story of the first 48-team World Cup — from Mexico's opening kickoff at the Azteca to Ferran Torres's 106th-minute winner in the final. Built on official FIFA rankings and minute-by-minute match data, not memory.
The expansion to 48 teams was supposed to water things down: more mismatches, more cautious football, more dead group games. The numbers say the opposite happened.
Seventeen matches, chosen not because they were the most important, but because each one tells you something about how this tournament actually played out — chronologically, kickoff to final.
Nine of Africa's ten teams reached the Round of 32, a 90% qualification rate, the highest of any confederation and historic for the continent. But more than half of them, five of nine, were leading or level with ten minutes to go in that very match, and still went home. Not a vague sense of collapsing late. These five specific matches, minute by minute.
The cruelest bucket. These underdogs didn't just compete, they took the lead or drew level deep into extra time before the gap in quality finally told. The final scoreline flattens all of this — the timeline doesn't.
No asterisk, no penalties to explain away for the wins. For the draws, a win/loss column misses the story entirely — these teams didn't beat a heavyweight, they simply refused to lose to one.
Every team's squad market value plotted against how far they actually went. Top-left is the expensive early exit. Bottom-right is the team that outran its wage bill.
First-ever tri-host World Cup. No home-advantage story to force here — the honest result is that all three hosts landed on exactly the same round.
Search, filter, and sort all 48 teams by possession, shots, cards, expected goals, and how far they went. Click any column header to sort.
Argentina's expected goals across their knockout run, match by match. Four rounds of a team that could not stop creating chances, then the one match where it counted most.