World Cup tracker: What the data tells us about who is most likely to win

The group stage is complete. Sixteen teams, including Scotland, are out. Thirty-two teams, including England, remain.

But what chance do those left have of winning the trophy?

Sports analytics firm Opta made England their third favourites heading into the tournament, using their "Supercomputer" model that estimates the predicted outcome of each match based on historical and recent performances by each team.

They briefly jumped up to second after beating Croatia in their first game. But they have since dropped back to fourth after unconvincing performances against Ghana and Panama and good results for some of their opponents.

Which players have performed best?

Harry Kane has been one of the best players in the world this season. Only France's Michael Olise was ranked higher than him in 2026, according to the Sky Sports Power Rankings.

Jude Bellingham has been England's best performer so far at this tournament, however. He has been the 12th best performer at the World Cup overall.

Scotland's Scott McTominay was also among the world's best performing players this season, but struggled to live up to expectations at this tournament. He was only Scotland's fifth highest rated player, and outside the top 400 overall.

Midfielder Lewis Ferguson who, like McTominay, plays his club football in Italy, was the Tartan Army's best player according to the Power Rankings.

The biggest World Cup ever

FIFA expanded the number of teams at this World Cup from 32 to 48. It means 72 matches have been played before the knockouts have even started. In a "traditional" World Cup format, there would be 64 games in total.

Africa benefitted most by the expansion. Their allocation of teams doubled from five to 10, meaning countries like Cape Verde and the Democratic Republic of Congo were able to qualify for the first time, although there was still no space for traditional heavyweights Nigeria or Cameroon.

The new places appear to have been justified by results, however.

Seven of the 10 African teams remain after the group stage, compared with just two of the 10 teams that qualified from Asia and Oceania combined.

Scotland were one of just three European teams to be eliminated, out of the 16 that qualified. Two-time winners Uruguay were the only South American team not to make it through to the knockouts.

What do fans think?

Supercomputers are one way of assessing teams' chances - psychic octopuses are another, but sometimes it's best to trust the wisdom of the crowd.

England's percentage chance of winning implied by the betting odds was 12.5% when the tournament started. That's equivalent to a one in eight chance - slightly better than that offered by the supercomputer.

It's the same odds as England's "Golden Generation" were given in 2006, when Sir David Beckham led a team to Germany that included four future England captains - Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand.

Only the 2010 side had a better chance of winning when the tournament started, according to the bookies.

We will talk about how England have performed against those expectations later on..

As for Scotland, the bookies had them at a 250/1 shot at the start, after being drawn in a group with five-time winners Brazil and African champions Morocco.

That effectively means they were given them a 0.4% chance of winning the tournament.

Every other team representing a UK nation at a World Cup since 1982 has been rated higher at the start of the tournament.

Living up to expectations

So, according to both the bookies and the experts, England's chances look fairly good. But expectations are one thing, and living up to them is another.

It's fair to say that England have not always done that.

In fact, there have only been two occasions in the last 12 World Cups where England improved on what was expected pre-tournament - Sir Gareth Southgate's first effort in 2018, and Sir Bobby Robson's swansong at Italia '90.

While England have rarely managed to perform better than expected, the eventual winners have tended to come from teams that were higher ranked anyway.

Only on two occasions since 1982 has a team with worse pre-tournament odds than England gone on to win the trophy.

On both of those occasions, Italy were the team coming from behind to win - in Spain in 1982 and in Germany in 2006, after Zinedine Zidane’s famous headbutt in the final.

That history will not be repeated this year at least, as Italy failed to qualify.

Software engineering by Jesse Okuji.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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