Where the market and the math disagree

• Polymarket: 9 teams → all 48, full stage ladder. The first analysis used a Poly Win% column that had been typed into the workbook for only 9 favorites, and those nine were normalized among themselves, so Spain read as 33%. The complete board (Win Group, Make R32, R16, QF, SF, Final, Win) puts Spain and France tied at 15.7% to win it all, which actually agrees with Fogle's 2.8 tie and reverses the earlier "market splits them 2 to 1" reading.
• Elo: 35 teams → all 48. Completed from eloratings.net (the same World Football Elo as the workbook's existing values, verified identical on the overlap: Spain 2155, USA 1726, Ivory Coast 1695). Fogle vs Elo over the full 48 is r = 0.879, Spearman 0.901 (the partial-35 figure was 0.887 / 0.915).
• The "9-team tournament" claim is retracted entirely. It was an artifact of an incomplete capture, exactly as the first report's adversarial pass suspected.

To compare against the market at every stage, the ratings need to become probabilities. That requires a tournament simulation.

• Engine: World Football Elo win expectancy per match, 1 / (1 + 10^(-ΔElo/400)), with a draw model in the group stage that widens for even sides and shrinks for mismatches.
• Structure: the actual WC2026 bracket from the schedule. 12 groups of 4 (round robin), top 2 plus the 8 best third-placed teams advance, then the real Round-of-32 group-slot matchups cascade through R16, QF, SF, and Final.
• Runs: 40,000 Monte Carlo tournaments. Title probabilities are stable to about ±0.2%.

1. Argentina is the one clean "back"

Elo rates Argentina the 2nd-strongest team in the world (2114, behind only Spain). The market prices them 5th to win it (8.6%, about +1063). The model makes them a co-favorite at 18.9%. They sit squarely in your +600 to +1500 value band, and unlike the other teams in that band, the model is above the market, not below.

2. The market pays up for name brands

Every favorite the model fades is a marquee side: Portugal (market 9.4% vs model 4.6%), England (10.8 vs 7.2), Germany (5.5 vs 2.4), Brazil (8.1 vs 5.1). Elo has them 6th, 4th, 10th, and 5th. This is your "betting reputation over form" warning rendered as a price: the market is a tier more optimistic on the famous teams than their Elo supports.

3. The host premium, finally visible

The venue-neutral model is the measuring stick. USA is the headline: the market gives them 46.3% to reach the Round of 16, the model only 14.2%, because by Elo the USA is the weakest team in Group D (behind Turkey 1911, Paraguay 1833, Australia 1777). That 32-point gap is almost entirely the home premium the market is paying. But it does not generalize: Mexico (model 59.9% to reach R16 vs market 52.1%) and Canada (47.8% vs 40.4%) are genuinely well placed in soft groups, so the model likes them even with no home edge. The "hosts" are not one bet.

4. The value band, filtered

Your principles say value clusters at +600 to +1500 (a 6.25% to 14.3% implied chance). Four teams live there: England, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil. The model backs exactly one of them, Argentina, and fades the other three. The band is where to look; it is not itself the edge.

5. The favorite tension is real

The model's two largest "backs" are Spain (+10.0) and Argentina (+10.3), the two shortest non-France prices. But a pure-Elo model concentrates probability on the best teams more than markets do, and your own rule says fade the shortest price. So Spain's +10 is mostly the model being top-heavy, while Argentina's +10 also carries a genuine market-vs-Elo tiering disagreement. If you trust one favorite-side number, trust Argentina's, and treat Spain's as "strong, not underpriced."

• "Elo over FIFA rankings." The model is Elo. Where Elo and the market disagree (Argentina, the host gap), that is the actionable space.
• "Avoid the shortest price; favorites win less than expected." Directly cautions against the model's top-heavy love of Spain. Honored: Spain is framed as strong, not value.
• "Value clusters at +600 to +1500." Used as the filter in finding 4. Argentina is the survivor.
• "Hosts historically overperform and are underpriced." The market clearly agrees and is already paying for it (USA most of all). A neutral model cannot confirm hosts are still value after that premium, it can only show the premium exists, so this stays a judgment call, not a model output.
• "Assess bracket path; soft route underpriced." The model uses the real bracket, so path is in the numbers. Spain's high figure is partly group H plus a friendly draw; Argentina's is partly a tougher road, which makes the market's low price on them more curious, not less.

The process you like, applied to this model before anyone bets it.

Model caveats (repeated so they travel with the numbers)

• Venue-neutral (no home advantage); host gaps are premiums, not value calls.
• Pure-Elo, so top-heavy versus real markets; favorite-side edges overstate value.
• One Elo snapshot; no xG, form, injuries, travel, or rest, all of which your principles call for before an actual bet.
• Group ties broken by Elo, not goal difference; third-place slotting by eligibility match, not FIFA's exact table.

Inputs

• Market: Polymarket normalized stage odds, board dated June 7 2026 (all 48 teams).
• Model strength: World Football Elo, eloratings.net, June 2026.
• Bracket: WC2026_Schedule.xlsx (real R32 through Final).

Files in ratings_analysis/

Companion: WC2026_Ratings_Analysis.html (the first report: distribution, confederations, group-of-death, and the owl/potato/owl pass that first flagged these two data gaps).