{"id":579628,"date":"2026-04-02T00:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579628\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T00:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T00:34:12","slug":"the-stats-dont-lie-socceroos-are-locked-in-the-toughest-group-of-the-2026-fifa-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579628\/","title":{"rendered":"The stats don\u2019t lie: Socceroos are locked in the toughest group of the 2026 FIFA World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the stats nerds at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/fmeetsdata\/status\/2039425730539352352?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">Football Meets Data<\/a> Tony Popovic and the Socceroos are about to head into an almighty group stage showdown at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Based on a series of proprietary simulations and probabilities, it calculates that Group D will be the tightest of the entire 48-team tournament as Australia goes toe-to-toe with T\u00fcrkiye, Paraguay and co-hosts the USA.<\/p>\n<p>All four teams have a greater than 62% to qualify for the second round.<\/p>\n<p>But on the flip-side each team also has at least a 23% chance of missing out altogether.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/football\/news\/australia-world-cup-draw-2026-group-schedule-socceroos\/1a4b7da49af41e01878aeb90\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Schedule, roster and more to know about Australia for 2026 World Cup draw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite being the last team to qualify for Group D, T\u00fcrkiye are slight favourites to win the group (32.7% probability) ahead of Paraguay (27.1%).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the USA and Australia are tipped to be fighting it out for the all-important third place that should be enough to gain qualification for the knock-out phase\u2014making their June 19 showdown in Seattle a critical moment in the tournament for both nations.<\/p>\n<p>The 27th-ranked Socceroos begin their World Cup campaign in Vancouver against 22nd-ranked T\u00fcrkiye on June 13 (Canada time).<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\ud83e\udd0f This is the tightest group of them all.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcc9 Lowest average xPts for group winner, \ud83d\udcc8 highest average for 4th-placed team!<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\uddf9\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddf5\ud83c\uddfe\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa All four teams with &gt;60% to qualify for R32!<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49 All probabilities and projections available in our \ud83d\udd79\ufe0f Simulator <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/JLgSJQn8Tx\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/JLgSJQn8Tx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Football Meets Data (@fmeetsdata) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/fmeetsdata\/status\/2039425730539352352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 1, 2026<\/a>Socceroos\u00a0FIFA World Cup 2026 schedule<\/p>\n<p>Date<\/p>\n<p>Opponent<\/p>\n<p>Location<\/p>\n<p>Time<\/p>\n<p>Saturday, June 13<\/p>\n<p>T\u00fcrkiye<\/p>\n<p>Vancouver<\/p>\n<p>2:00 p.m. (Sunday June 14 AEST)<\/p>\n<p>Friday, June 19<\/p>\n<p>USA<\/p>\n<p>Seattle<\/p>\n<p>5:00 a.m. (Saturday June 20, AEST)<\/p>\n<p>Thursday, 25 June<\/p>\n<p>Paraguay<\/p>\n<p>San Francisco<\/p>\n<p>12:00 p.m. (Friday, 26 June, AEST)<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the stats nerds at Football Meets Data Tony Popovic and the Socceroos are about to head&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-579628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}