England is the clear favourite, winning Group L64% of the time. England (98%) and Croatia (90%) are the likeliest to advance; Ghana carries the group's best third-place qualification hope (21%).
§ 01
Advancement matrix
Each team's group-stage fate, split into win-group · runner-up · best-third qualify · eliminated (the four sum to one). Ordered by P(win group).
§ 02
The six fixtures
Round-robin match forecasts — win/draw/loss, the single most-likely scoreline, and the over-2.5 / both-teams-to-score rates, marginalised from the locked ensemble scoreline grids.
- M21 17 Jun · 23:00 UTC Toronto StadiumW 33 D 32.1 W 34.9 O2.5 35% BTTS 43% xG 1.03–1.07
- M22 17 Jun · 20:00 UTC Dallas StadiumW 47.8 D 30.5 W 21.7 O2.5 36% BTTS 41% xG 1.32–0.80
- M45 23 Jun · 20:00 UTC Boston StadiumW 74.5 D 19.1 W 6.4 O2.5 45% BTTS 32% xG 2.03–0.44
- M46 23 Jun · 23:00 UTC Toronto StadiumW 11.4 D 22.8 W 65.8 O2.5 46% BTTS 41% xG 0.65–1.87
- M67 27 Jun · 21:00 UTC New York/New Jersey StadiumW 5.3 D 15.8 W 78.9 O2.5 54% BTTS 35% xG 0.48–2.35
- M68 27 Jun · 21:00 UTC Philadelphia StadiumW 64.6 D 23.9 W 11.5 O2.5 43% BTTS 39% xG 1.77–0.61
§ 03
Where they finish
The simulated final-standings distribution: how often each team finishes 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th across 100,000 tournaments.
Fig. V4 100k sims · official tiebreakers · row sums to 100%
Group L — simulated finishing positions
Top two qualify automatically (left of the line). Third place advances only as one of the eight best third-placed teams across the twelve groups.
England owns first place (64%); below the top two the third- and fourth-place mass is where qualification is really decided.
Reading the matrix and the heatmap
Both the advancement matrix and this heatmap are tallied from the same locked 100,000-tournament simulation that produces the forecast. Each row of the heatmap sums to 100% (a team finishes somewhere); each column sums to 100% across the four teams (exactly one team takes each position). The dashed line sits between 2nd and 3rd: the top two qualify automatically, while third place advances only if it ranks among the eight best third-placed teams across the twelve groups — which is why a team's P(advance) exceeds its P(top-two) by its best-third qualification chance.