Scotland
- Coach
- Steve Clarke
- Elo (model)
- 1,782 world 33rd
- Squad value
- €272M
- Power → Reality
- 29th 29th +0.01 pp · neutral draw
§ 01
The forecast
How far Scotland 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
Scotland — stage progression
On the central forecast, Scotland more likely than not reaches the Round of 32 (70%). Champion probability is 0.2% ± 0.01 pts.
§ 02
The group & the path
Group C advancement odds, the bracket half Scotland sits in, and the earliest round they could meet each leading side.
| Group C | Confed | Advance (top 2) | Reach R32 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇧🇷Brazil | CONMEBOL | 67.1% | 98.3% |
| 2 | 🇲🇦Morocco | CAF | 44.9% | 88.8% |
| 3 | 🏴Scotland | UEFA | 25.5% | 70.4% |
| 4 | 🇭🇹Haiti | CONCACAF | 1.4% | 11.6% |
Source · Oxford Football Forecasting model
Earliest possible meetings
No collision rows recorded for this team.
Collision = the earliest round the bracket wiring could pit Scotland against that side. Full bracket & collision matrix →
§ 03
Match by match
Scotland'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 Scotland. Knockout fixtures are not shown — their occupants are still probabilistic, so there is no single pairing to forecast yet.
§ 04
Strength profile
Where Scotland stands against the median of the 48-team field, metric by metric. The dot is Scotland; the dashed line is the field median (1.0×).
Fig. D2 Relative to the 48-team median
Scotland 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
Scotland on the decoupling axis
g = +0.30 ± 0.05: the squad is valued above its record — the transfer market rates this side above what its results have earned.
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 | Angus Gunn | GK | Nottingham Forest | Premier League +2.21z | 45 | 0 | 22 | 0 |
| 2 | Aaron Hickey | DF | Brentford | Premier League +2.21z | 1,059 | 1 | 21 | 0 |
| 3 | Andy Robertson (captain) | DF | Liverpool | Premier League +2.21z | 2,109 | 4 | 94 | 4 |
| 4 | Scott McTominay | MF | Napoli | Serie A +1.70z | 3,706 | 14 | 70 | 15 |
| 5 | Grant Hanley | DF | Hibernian | Premiership −0.28z | 2,012 | 0 | 68 | 2 |
| 6 | Kieran Tierney | DF | Celtic | Premiership −0.28z | 3,381 | 6 | 56 | 2 |
| 7 | John McGinn | MF | Aston Villa | Premier League +2.21z | 3,118 | 10 | 86 | 20 |
| 8 | Tyler Fletcher | MF | Manchester United | Premier League +2.21z | 107 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 9 | Lyndon Dykes | FW | Charlton Athletic | Championship +2.21z | 1,524 | 3 | 51 | 10 |
| 10 | Ché Adams | FW | Torino | Serie A +1.70z | 2,115 | 8 | 47 | 13 |
| 11 | Ryan Christie | MF | Bournemouth | Premier League +2.21z | 1,150 | 2 | 68 | 10 |
| 12 | Liam Kelly | GK | Rangers | — | — no club data | — | 3 | 0 |
| 13 | Jack Hendry | DF | Al-Ettifaq | — | — no club data | — | 38 | 3 |
| 14 | Ross Stewart | FW | Southampton | Championship +2.21z | 1,352 | 11 | 3 | 0 |
| 15 | John Souttar | DF | Rangers | Premiership −0.28z | 3,644 | 1 | 24 | 2 |
| 16 | Dominic Hyam | DF | Wrexham | Championship +2.21z | 3,920 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 17 | Ben Gannon-Doak | FW | Bournemouth | Premier League +2.21z | 167 | 0 | 14 | 1 |
| 18 | George Hirst | FW | Ipswich Town | Championship +2.21z | 2,222 | 11 | 10 | 1 |
| 19 | Lewis Ferguson | MF | Bologna | Serie A +1.70z | 2,949 | 1 | 24 | 1 |
| 20 | Lawrence Shankland | FW | Heart of Midlothian | League Cup −0.28z | 5,533 | 40 | 20 | 7 |
| 21 | Craig Gordon | GK | Heart of Midlothian | Premiership −0.28z | 226 | 0 | 84 | 0 |
| 22 | Nathan Patterson | DF | Everton | Premier League +2.21z | 382 | 0 | 26 | 1 |
| 23 | Kenny McLean | MF | Norwich City | — | — no club data | — | 58 | 3 |
| 24 | Anthony Ralston | DF | Celtic | Premiership −0.28z | 1,638 | 0 | 27 | 1 |
| 25 | Findlay Curtis | FW | Kilmarnock | Premiership −0.28z | 1,076 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| 26 | Scott McKenna | DF | Dinamo Zagreb | HNL +0.34z | 3,548 | 2 | 50 | 1 |
Source · Official squad announcements · API-Football (global club coverage). 3 of 26 players have no club season matched in API-Football — shown as “— no club data”, not imputed. Form coverage for this squad: 88%.
§ 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
1,215,048
18.0 per 1,000 of home population
Host-language familiarity
Shared
primary language English · spoken in a host
Climate adaptation gap
+3.7°C
home-vs-venue heat differential
Venue extremes
42°C
peak heat index · altitude up to 83 m
Travel
5h
max time-zone shift · nearest venue 5,299 km
Source · UN DESA international migrant stock · US Census Bureau · Open-Meteo & venue records
§ 08
Elo trajectory
Scotland's long-run strength against the qualified-field median, 1950–2026.
Fig. D4 eloratings.net method · year-end values
Scotland — Elo since 1950
Scotland ends the series at 1844 Elo, the world’s 33rd-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 Scotland, 3 of 26 players are shown as “— no club data”. Full validation, calibration & conformal coverage →