The 2026 World Cup is fast approaching, and with it, the excitement and anticipation are palpable. As a football enthusiast, I can't help but be intrigued by the prospect of 48 teams battling it out on the pitch, with the promise of $11,000 tickets and three host nations: Mexico, Canada, and the United States. But beyond the spectacle, the World Cup is also a referendum on the state of the U.S. soccer program, and recent results suggest that we might not be ready to pass in a blaze of red, white, and blue glory. This is where PELE, our new international soccer model, comes into play. PELE, or Predictive Elo with Lineup Equilibria, is a sophisticated system that combines the best features of the Soccer Power Index (SPI) with some tricks learned from newer models. It uses a mix of match results, player market values, and historical economic and geographic data, all obsessively customized to the peculiar contours of the global sport. Personally, I think PELE has a lot of value on its own, and it might be my favorite model we've worked on. Starting today, we'll publish our PELE ratings for all 211 FIFA teams, covering all years since 1872, and update them whenever new matches are played. One thing that immediately stands out is that PELE is designed to be predictive, which means it can be more sympathetic to recent underperformers like Germany (#7 in PELE, #10 in FIFA) and more skeptical of teams on a possibly unsustainable hot streak. It also tends to like South American teams better than FIFA, and market value data can help teams with star talent like Norway in PELE. The PELE system provides a continuously updated pair of ratings: PELE and Tilt. PELE is the headline number that predicts overall team quality, essentially a variation of an Elo rating system, though it's affected by changes in player market values and player ages as well as match results. Argentina and Spain are essentially tied for the top slot as we head into the 2026 World Cup, but the United States is surprisingly lower down the rankings. The Tilt ratings indicate a team's tendency toward attacking or defensive play, based on both long-term tactical preferences and the personnel on the field. For instance, the presence of Erling Haaland makes Norway more attack-minded than they otherwise would be. Now that we have both PELE and Tilt ratings, we can do some neat things, like forecast matches! Our round-robin results project every pairwise combination of match results between the 211 current FIFA members, allowing us to derive offensive and defensive ratings for each team. Teams with negative Tilt ratings like Colombia and Senegal will produce lower-scoring matches with more draws. But better yet, let's forecast some actual games. We've uploaded the schedule for all future international matches, including group-stage matches for the 2026 World Cup, though our ratings for World Cup games will be slightly tweaked later once rosters are finalized. In conclusion, PELE is a fascinating and innovative model that offers a fresh perspective on international soccer rankings. It's a tool that can help us understand the strengths and weaknesses of different teams, and it's exciting to think about the possibilities it opens up for forecasting and analysis. As we approach the 2026 World Cup, I can't help but be intrigued by the potential for upsets and surprises, and I'm eager to see how PELE performs in predicting the outcome of the tournament.
