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Every 2026 knockout team, by how many of the last 10 World Cups it reached each stage.
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Where this came from
When the 2026 knockout bracket locked, the question in every thread was some version of "does experience matter?" So we asked the record: for each team still alive, how many of the last 10 World Cups (1986-2022) did it reach each stage? The chart is why the Norway and Switzerland runs felt so strange to watch — first quarterfinals in decades — while Brazil, 10-for-10 reaching the round of 16 in the window, went home early anyway. Pedigree gets you to the knockout rounds. It stops mattering the moment you're in them, which is exactly what the EP 02 bracket engine assumes.
Does World Cup pedigree predict knockout wins?
It predicts who shows up, not who advances — and 2026 made the case brutally. Germany had played all 10 of the last 10 World Cups and reached eight quarterfinals in the window, then died in its first knockout game, on penalties, to Paraguay. The round of 32 took out Germany, the Netherlands, and Croatia — all three by penalties or a single goal. One round later Norway, with two World Cups since 1986 and zero quarterfinals, ended Brazil's perfect 10-for-10 run to the round of 16. And Mexico — eight round-of-16 trips in the window, one quarterfinal — reached the round of 16 again and no further. The curse holds.
Who had the most World Cup experience left by the quarterfinals?
Argentina, at 7 of the last 10 quarterfinals — then France and England at 6, Spain at 4, Belgium at 3, Morocco at 1, and Norway and Switzerland at 0 of 10 apiece: twenty combined chances, zero quarterfinals, both suddenly in the final eight. Switzerland's previous World Cup quarterfinal was 1954. That spread — decorated regulars next to total strangers — is the chart's whole argument in one row.
One honest footnote
The dataset has no round labels, so rounds are counted from games played: every team plays exactly 3 group games in this era, so a 4th game means the round of 16 and a 5th means the quarterfinal. That inference is exact for every World Cup in the window.
Check it yourself
Brazil's 10-for-10, in one query — 4 or more games in every single cup:
SELECT year(date) AS wc, count(*) AS brazil_games
FROM read_parquet('https://data.mathvsvibes.com/wc/results.parquet')
WHERE tournament = 'FIFA World Cup'
AND 'Brazil' IN (home_team, away_team)
AND year(date) BETWEEN 1986 AND 2022
GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;
-- 10 rows, every value >= 4
Receipt trail: posted on r/SoccerCentral and r/football. Source data: martj42/international_results (CC0).