Australia
- Coach
- Tony Popovic home · Australian
- Elo (model)
- 1,777 world 24th
- Squad value
- €55M
- Power → Reality
- 25th 27th −0.00 pp · neutral draw
§ 01
The forecast
How far Australia goes — the survival probability at each stage of the bracket, from the tournament Monte-Carlo simulation. Each bar carries its ±1.96·MC-SE interval.
Fig. D1 Fixture-aware · 100k sims
Australia — stage progression
On the central forecast, Australia more likely than not reaches the Round of 32 (61%). Champion probability is 0.3% ± 0.02 pts.
§ 02
The group & the path
Group D advancement odds, the bracket half Australia sits in, and the earliest round they could meet each leading side.
| Group D | Confed | Advance (top 2) | Reach R32 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇹🇷Türkiye | UEFA | 43.7% | 76.7% |
| 2 | 🇵🇾Paraguay | CONMEBOL | 35.6% | 69.2% |
| 3 | 🇺🇸USA | CONCACAF | 29.4% | 67.2% |
| 4 | 🇦🇺Australia | AFC | 28.6% | 61.3% |
Source · Oxford Football Forecasting model
Earliest possible meetings
No collision rows recorded for this team.
Collision = the earliest round the bracket wiring could pit Australia against that side. Full bracket & collision matrix →
§ 03
Match by match
Australia's three group fixtures, each with the predicted win / draw / loss split and the single most-likely scoreline. Probabilities are this team's own orientation; they sum to 100%.
How a match forecast is built
Each pairing is scored by the ensemble (Dixon-Coles bivariate-Poisson, the Bayesian hierarchical model and the global LightGBM-Poisson, log-pooled), producing an 11×11 scoreline grid that is marginalised into win/draw/loss, expected goals (λ), over/under 2.5 and both-teams-to-score. These are the same distributions the tournament simulator consumes, oriented here to Australia. Knockout fixtures are not shown — their occupants are still probabilistic, so there is no single pairing to forecast yet.
§ 04
Strength profile
Where Australia stands against the median of the 48-team field, metric by metric. The dot is Australia; the dashed line is the field median (1.0×).
Fig. D2 Relative to the 48-team median
Australia vs the field
Read each row as a multiple of the field median: dots to the right of the dashed line are above-field, to the left below. Raw values are labelled on the right so the comparison is transparent.
§ 05
History vs squad
The decoupling residual g — whether the squad’s market value sits above, or below, what the team’s record predicts.
Fig. D3 Bayesian projection residual g
Australia on the decoupling axis
g = −0.72 ± 0.05: the record outruns the squad price — the team has achieved more than its comparatively modest squad value would predict.
What g means — and its limits
g is the residual from regressing a team’s current squad market value on its
history-based strength in the Bayesian hierarchical model. Positive g
means the squad is valued above what the team’s record predicts; negative means the
record outruns the squad’s price (the side achieves more than its market value implies).
Regressed on out-of-sample success the slope is positive — squad-rich sides go a touch
further — but not statistically significant at n = 3 tournaments, so treat
a single team’s g as a descriptive read, not a hard prediction.
The full decoupling essay →
§ 06
The squad
All 26 selected players — club, league (with relative strength), club-season minutes and goals, caps. Sort any column.
| # | Player | Pos | Club | League | Club min | Gls | Caps | NT gls |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mathew Ryan (captain) | GK | Levante | La Liga +2.13z | 3,240 | 0 | 104 | 0 |
| 2 | Miloš Degenek | DF | APOEL | — | — no club data | — | 57 | 1 |
| 3 | Alessandro Circati | DF | Parma | Serie A +1.70z | 52 | 0 | 13 | 1 |
| 4 | Jacob Italiano | DF | Grazer AK | Bundesliga +0.26z | 2,065 | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| 5 | Jordan Bos | DF | Feyenoord | — | — no club data | — | 27 | 4 |
| 6 | Jason Geria | DF | Albirex Niigata | J1 League −0.99z | 1,456 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| 7 | Mathew Leckie | FW | Melbourne City | A-League −2.17z | 407 | 0 | 80 | 14 |
| 8 | Connor Metcalfe | MF | FC St. Pauli | Bundesliga +1.84z | 712 | 0 | 36 | 1 |
| 9 | Mohamed Touré | FW | Norwich City | — | — no club data | — | 10 | 2 |
| 10 | Ajdin Hrustic | FW | Heracles Almelo | Eredivisie +0.74z | 2,522 | 4 | 37 | 4 |
| 11 | Awer Mabil | FW | Castellón | Segunda División +2.13z | 1,721 | 3 | 38 | 10 |
| 12 | Paul Izzo | GK | Randers | Superliga −0.53z | 2,340 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| 13 | Aiden O'Neill | MF | New York City FC | Major League Soccer −0.71z | 2,064 | 0 | 31 | 0 |
| 14 | Cammy Devlin | MF | Heart of Midlothian | Premiership −0.28z | 4,405 | 3 | 5 | 0 |
| 15 | Kai Trewin | DF | New York City FC | — | — no club data | — | 6 | 0 |
| 16 | Aziz Behich | DF | Melbourne City | A-League −2.17z | 3,066 | 3 | 84 | 3 |
| 17 | Nestory Irankunda | FW | Watford | Championship +2.21z | 2,221 | 4 | 15 | 5 |
| 18 | Patrick Beach | GK | Melbourne City | A-League −2.17z | 3,165 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 19 | Harry Souttar | DF | Leicester City | Championship +2.21z | 178 | 1 | 38 | 11 |
| 20 | Cristian Volpato | FW | Sassuolo | Serie A +1.70z | 1,190 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| 21 | Cameron Burgess | DF | Swansea City | Championship +2.21z | 4,531 | 2 | 27 | 0 |
| 22 | Jackson Irvine | MF | FC St. Pauli | Bundesliga +1.84z | 1,744 | 0 | 82 | 14 |
| 23 | Nishan Velupillay | FW | Melbourne Victory | A-League −2.17z | 1,467 | 4 | 7 | 3 |
| 24 | Paul Okon-Engstler | MF | Sydney FC | A-League −2.17z | 2,325 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| 25 | Lucas Herrington | DF | Colorado Rapids | — | — no club data | — | 4 | 0 |
| 26 | Tete Yengi | FW | Machida Zelvia | AFC Champions League Elite −0.05z | 480 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Source · Official squad announcements · API-Football (global club coverage). 5 of 26 players have no club season matched in API-Football — shown as “— no club data”, not imputed. Form coverage for this squad: 81%.
§ 07
Tournament context
The host-nation environment this team meets — diaspora support, climate and altitude exposure at their venues, language familiarity.
Diaspora in the hosts
126,673
5.0 per 1,000 of home population
Host-language familiarity
Shared
primary language English · spoken in a host
Climate adaptation gap
−3.0°C
home-vs-venue heat differential
Venue extremes
28°C
peak heat index · altitude up to 14 m
Travel
18h
max time-zone shift · nearest venue 12,206 km
Source · UN DESA international migrant stock · US Census Bureau · Open-Meteo & venue records
§ 08
Elo trajectory
Australia's long-run strength against the qualified-field median, 1950–2026.
Fig. D4 eloratings.net method · year-end values
Australia — Elo since 1950
Australia ends the series at 1902 Elo, the world’s 24th-ranked side — above the qualified-field median.
Which Elo is this?
This line is the public eloratings.net series (year-end ratings), which terminates exactly at the current rating and world rank shown on the marker. It is a different number from the Elo shown in the header band (a panel-normalised rating used inside the forecast); the two are ~0.99 correlated but on different scales. We keep them distinct rather than blend them.
§ 09
Data coverage
Validated on n=3 held-out tournaments; coverage below 1.0 means part of this squad's club-form/fitness is imputed (the global de-biasing layer). For Australia, 5 of 26 players are shown as “— no club data”. Full validation, calibration & conformal coverage →