If France won the last men’s World Cup thanks in part to then-19-year-old Kylian Mbappé, then should Les Bleus repeat in Qatar he ought to take the Jules Rimet trophy home for himself. The full-grown phenom has been, well, phenomenal: After scoring twice in France’s 3-1 win over Poland on Sunday, he’s tallied two more […]
Ten days before the World Cup began, we tried to predict which group might be the tournament’s Group of Death. In doing so, we discovered that Qatar 2022 contained two of the 14 most difficult groups by average pre-tournament Elo rating among all World Cups dating back to 1970. One of those groups — Group […]
In international football, England’s Harry Kane is as stellar as they come. As his team prepares to take on Senegal in the Round of 16 at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, he needs just three more strikes to pass Wayne Rooney’s mark of 53 and become the country’s all-time leading goal scorer. And if the […]
Christian Pulisic nearly captured the entire story of the United States’ win-or-go-home match against Iran on Tuesday in the second minute, when he took off on a dangerous-looking run forward that came to nothing. But after 37 minutes, seven shots and five chances that generated 0.42 expected goals but no actual goals (while allowing none, […]
When the 2022 World Cup made its debut on Sunday, it kicked off one of the most significant in-game uses of technology in sports history. All tournament long, match balls will contain a sensor that collects spatial positioning data in real time — the first World Cup to employ such a ball-tracking mechanism. This, combined […]