Built for the weeks before kickoff, and ready for the tournament itself.
A World Cup 2026 dashboard designed for fans and journalists: rankings, group comparisons, country comparisons, fast chart reads, and a live-updatable tournament shell. The current editorial focus is on height and age, because those are the clearest physical stories in the squad data.
The source file includes a 2026 cohort before kickoff. Treat 2026 as a dataset row, not completed tournament history.
The historical trend window here focuses on 1990 onward, while country-vs-history cards look back roughly 30 to 40 years when the data exists.
Core trends
The modern World Cup story is not subtle. Players have grown taller, squads have grown older, and the age curve has mostly flattened since the 1990s.
Group and confederation pressure points
This is where scenario framing gets useful before kickoff. Some groups are big, some are old, and UEFA clearly sits at the tall end of the 2026 field. Use the year selector below to see whether that confederation gap holds in earlier tournaments too.
| Confederation | Teams A | Height A | Age A | Teams B | Height B | Age B | Height Δ | Age Δ |
|---|
Country and story desk
This block is designed for newsroom use: pull quick story angles, filter teams, compare teams, and see who has changed the most from roughly 30 to 40 years ago.
| Country | Group | Height | Age | Hist. |
|---|
Quick comparison
Search for teams directly or click groups. Country cards compare the 2026 cohort with `1994` first, then `1986` where `1994` is unavailable.
Tactical shape
Position shares are not a perfect tactical model, but they are a very good shorthand. The old forward-heavy World Cup is gone.
Live center readiness
This is the section intended to switch from static pre-tournament context to updating tournament service once competition APIs are connected.