New Zealand
- Coach
- Darren Bazeley foreign · English
- Elo (model)
- 1,562 world 62nd
- Squad value
- €28M
- Power → Reality
- 44th 46th −0.00 pp · neutral draw
§ 01
The forecast
How far New Zealand 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
New Zealand — stage progression
New Zealand is most likely eliminated before the knockout rounds: 28% to clear the group. Champion probability 0.00%.
§ 02
The group & the path
Group G advancement odds, the bracket half New Zealand sits in, and the earliest round they could meet each leading side.
| Group G | Confed | Advance (top 2) | Reach R32 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇧🇪Belgium | UEFA | 61.9% | 93.9% |
| 2 | 🇮🇷IR Iran | AFC | 39.5% | 79.4% |
| 3 | 🇪🇬Egypt | CAF | 28.1% | 67.6% |
| 4 | 🇳🇿New Zealand | OFC | 6.0% | 27.6% |
Source · Oxford Football Forecasting model
Earliest possible meetings
No collision rows recorded for this team.
Collision = the earliest round the bracket wiring could pit New Zealand against that side. Full bracket & collision matrix →
§ 03
Match by match
New Zealand'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 New Zealand. Knockout fixtures are not shown — their occupants are still probabilistic, so there is no single pairing to forecast yet.
§ 04
Strength profile
Where New Zealand stands against the median of the 48-team field, metric by metric. The dot is New Zealand; the dashed line is the field median (1.0×).
Fig. D2 Relative to the 48-team median
New Zealand 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
New Zealand on the decoupling axis
g = +0.01 ± 0.11: squad market value and recent record are closely aligned.
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 | Max Crocombe | GK | Millwall | Championship +2.21z | 2,255 | 0 | 24 | 0 |
| 2 | Tim Payne | DF | Wellington Phoenix | A-League −2.17z | 868 | 0 | 51 | 3 |
| 3 | Francis de Vries | DF | Auckland FC | A-League −2.17z | 2,022 | 1 | 20 | 1 |
| 4 | Tyler Bindon | DF | Sheffield United | — | — no club data | — | 25 | 3 |
| 5 | Michael Boxall | DF | Minnesota United FC | Major League Soccer −0.71z | 3,156 | 1 | 63 | 1 |
| 6 | Joe Bell | MF | Viking | Eliteserien −0.13z | 2,902 | 3 | 32 | 1 |
| 7 | Matthew Garbett | MF | Peterborough United | League One +2.21z | 2,267 | 3 | 37 | 5 |
| 8 | Marko Stamenić | MF | Swansea City | Championship +2.21z | 2,644 | 3 | 39 | 3 |
| 9 | Chris Wood (captain) | FW | Nottingham Forest | Premier League +2.21z | 1,143 | 5 | 90 | 45 |
| 10 | Sarpreet Singh | MF | Wellington Phoenix | A-League −2.17z | 74 | 0 | 28 | 3 |
| 11 | Elijah Just | MF | Motherwell | Premiership −0.28z | 3,088 | 7 | 44 | 9 |
| 12 | Alex Paulsen | GK | Lechia Gdańsk | Ekstraklasa −0.29z | 2,160 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| 13 | Liberato Cacace | DF | Wrexham | Championship +2.21z | 787 | 1 | 37 | 1 |
| 14 | Alex Rufer | MF | Wellington Phoenix | A-League −2.17z | 2,134 | 2 | 26 | 0 |
| 15 | Nando Pijnaker | DF | Auckland FC | A-League −2.17z | 968 | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| 16 | Finn Surman | DF | Portland Timbers | Major League Soccer −0.71z | 3,244 | 0 | 19 | 2 |
| 17 | Kosta Barbarouses | FW | Western Sydney Wanderers | A-League −2.17z | 1,340 | 4 | 76 | 10 |
| 18 | Ben Waine | FW | Port Vale | League One +2.21z | 1,779 | 7 | 31 | 9 |
| 19 | Ben Old | MF | Saint-Étienne | — | — no club data | — | 24 | 2 |
| 20 | Callum McCowatt | MF | Silkeborg | Superliga −0.53z | 2,852 | 12 | 32 | 4 |
| 21 | Jesse Randall | FW | Auckland FC | A-League −2.17z | 2,475 | 9 | 11 | 2 |
| 22 | Michael Woud | GK | Auckland FC | A-League −2.17z | 2,481 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| 23 | Ryan Thomas | MF | PEC Zwolle | Eredivisie +0.74z | 2,168 | 1 | 25 | 3 |
| 24 | Callan Elliot | DF | Auckland FC | A-League −2.17z | 1,762 | 0 | 11 | 0 |
| 25 | Lachlan Bayliss | MF | Newcastle Jets | A-League −2.17z | 1,850 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| 26 | Tommy Smith | DF | Braintree Town | FA Cup +2.21z | 22 | 0 | 56 | 2 |
Source · Official squad announcements · API-Football (global club coverage). 2 of 26 players have no club season matched in API-Football — shown as “— no club data”, not imputed. Form coverage for this squad: 92%.
§ 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
60,395
11.0 per 1,000 of home population
Host-language familiarity
Shared
primary language English · spoken in a host
Climate adaptation gap
−5.6°C
home-vs-venue heat differential
Venue extremes
29°C
peak heat index · altitude up to 45 m
Travel
20h
max time-zone shift · nearest venue 10,799 km
Source · UN DESA international migrant stock · US Census Bureau · Open-Meteo & venue records
§ 08
Elo trajectory
New Zealand's long-run strength against the qualified-field median, 1951–2026.
Fig. D4 eloratings.net method · year-end values
New Zealand — Elo since 1951
New Zealand ends the series at 1734 Elo, the world’s 62nd-ranked side — below 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 New Zealand, 2 of 26 players are shown as “— no club data”. Full validation, calibration & conformal coverage →