Netherlands v Japan · Oxford Football Forecasting

🇳🇱 Netherlands UEFA Elo 1,944 · world 9th

42 / 31 / 27 win · draw · win most likely 1–1

🇯🇵 Japan AFC Elo 1,906 · world 11th

Group: F
Date: Sunday 14 June 2026
Kick-off: 20:00 UTC
Venue: Dallas Stadium, Arlington

§ 01

The scoreline grid

The ensemble's full distribution over exact scorelines — Netherlands goals down the side, Japan goals across the top. This is the same 11×11 grid the tournament simulator samples.

Fig. V7 Ensemble · Group F

Netherlands v Japan — scoreline probabilities

Cells show P(exact scoreline); the right column and bottom row are the marginal totals P(Netherlands scores k) and P(Japan scores k). Grid runs 0–7 goals per side; the 8–10-goal tail holds 0.00% of the mass and is omitted from the cells (not from the totals).

The grid makes Netherlands favourites at 42.2%, with a 30.9% draw. The single most-likely scoreline is 1–1 (14.2%), but no exact score clears 14% — the distribution is broad, as it should be.

Source · Oxford Football Forecasting model

§ 02

Result, goals & totals

The grid marginalised into the outcome split, expected goals each side, and the goal-total markets — every figure read straight off the same distribution.

Win · draw · loss

42.2% 30.9% 26.9%

🇳🇱 Netherlands 42.2% Draw 30.9% 🇯🇵 Japan 26.9%

Rounded values sum to exactly 100%.

Expected goals (λ)

🇳🇱Netherlands 1.25

🇯🇵Japan 0.94

Poisson means feeding the grid; combined expected goals 2.19.

37.5% Over 2.5 goals P(3 or more goals in the match)

62.5% Under 2.5 goals complement of over-2.5

44.6% Both teams to score P(each side scores ≥ 1)

1–1 Most-likely scoreline modal exact score · 14.2%

§ 03

Venue context

The conditions at Dallas Stadium, Arlington — the same environment layer the dossiers' climate exposure draws on.

AT&T Arlington, USA

Heat index 45°C apparent temperature (June–July)

Max temperature 35°C June–July daily high

Humidity 62% relative humidity

Altitude 177m above sea level

Source · Open-Meteo & venue records. Travel and time-zone exposure are per-team — see each side's dossier.

§ 04

Why the model leans this way

The inputs behind the grid — each side's strength signals laid side by side. The forecast is the ensemble's, not a hand-weighting of these; this panel is the descriptive read.

1,944 Elo rating 1,906

2.00 Recent NT form 2.20

€1076M Squad value €384M

0.252 Squad form (global) 0.208

0.822 Fitness readiness 0.753

+0.41 Decoupling g −0.19

Netherlands carry the Elo edge (38 points). On the decoupling axis, Netherlands is the side whose squad is valued higher relative to its record.

How a single-match forecast is built

The pairing is scored by the ensemble — Dixon-Coles bivariate-Poisson, the Bayesian hierarchical model and the global LightGBM-Poisson, log-pooled — yielding the 11×11 scoreline grid above. Win/draw/loss, expected goals (λ), over-2.5 and both-teams-to-score are all marginals of that one grid, so they are mutually consistent by construction. The strength inputs shown here feed the models; the forecast is their pooled output, not a manual weighting of these rows. The model matches the market out-of-sample (RPS 0.1891 vs 0.1905); it does not significantly beat it at n = 3. The ensemble, in full →