Bottom line, after the audit
▸The data: one number, dressed in fourteen columns
▸The spreadsheet's "ratings" are Jeff Fogle's market-consensus goal-supremacy ratings: higher means stronger, the scale runs from Curacao at −1.1 to Spain and France at 2.8, and 2.5 is roughly championship caliber. Crucially it is a goal scale, the spread between two teams is a predicted goal margin.
Confederation and Host columns and the "Congo → Congo DR" fix were added by the analyst, not in the source. Eight of the fourteen columns are arithmetic functions of the one Fogle number, so the sheet holds far less independent information than its width suggests.
Explore all 48 teams
Click any column header to sort. Filter by confederation, or isolate the three hosts. The Lean column compares each team's rank under Fogle vs under Elo, computed inside the 35-team set that has both (so it is an apples-to-apples comparison, see the audit for why that matters).
Tier dots: Elite (≥2.3) Strong (1.9–2.2) Solid (1.4–1.8) Fringe (0.7–1.3) Minnow (<0.7). ★ = host. Elo rank is a global world rank; Lean re-ranks within the shared 35.
Statistical analysis
▸Descriptive shape, normality, outliers, correlation, and group tests on the 48-team cross-section.
Shape and tiers
Mean 1.367, median 1.60, SD 0.835, range 3.9. The mean sitting below the median is moderate left skew (−0.72): a dense cluster of decent teams with a thin tail of weak ones dragging the average down. Natural tiers fall out of the 0.1 grid, though heavy ties mean the tier lines are softer than they look.
Normality (handle with care)
Shapiro p = 0.062, D'Agostino p = 0.067, Jarque–Bera p = 0.114 all fail to reject; Anderson–Darling rejects (A² = 0.79 > 0.73). Verdict: approximately normal with a real mild left tail. Honest caveat surfaced by the audit: running normality tests on a variable rounded to 0.1 with 36 ties is close to decorative. The descriptive skew is the real takeaway, the p-values are not.
Outliers
Only one team clears the 1.5×IQR fence: Curacao (−1.1), also the most extreme z-score (−2.95). Every flagged tail is at the weak end. The elite at 2.8 sit comfortably inside the fence, the ceiling is compressed, the floor runs long.
Correlation, and which ones are real
- Fogle vs Elo: r = 0.887, Spearman 0.915 (n=35). Genuine cross-system agreement, and robust (it survives dropping the eight most extreme teams). This is the single most reassuring number in the file.
- Fogle vs Polymarket: r = 0.77 (n=9). Favorites only, directional at best.
- Fogle vs Avg group spread: r = 0.976. tautology Avg spread is computed from Fogle, this is arithmetic agreeing with itself.
- Fogle vs Group difficulty: r = −0.69. A seeding artifact, strong teams do not play themselves.
Confederations differ; the test that proves it; the test that does not
Mean rating by confederation: UEFA 1.97 and CONMEBOL 1.97 are statistically tied at the top, well above CAF 1.06, AFC 0.81, and CONCACAF 0.62. Because variances differ wildly (Levene p = 0.001, CONCACAF spans Curacao to Mexico), the right test is Kruskal–Wallis: H = 24.6, p = 6e-05, a large effect (ε² = 0.49). Caveat: this is ecological, it describes pools, not individual teams.
The host test, and why it proves nothing
Hosts average 1.70 vs 1.34 for the field, and a Welch t gives p = 0.048. Do not trust it. With n = 3 and two hosts identical at 1.8, the host SD collapses to 0.17 and manufactures the "significance". A permutation null beats the host mean 26.6% of the time, Mann–Whitney gives p = 0.47, and Canada (1.5) is below the field median. There is no provable host effect here.
The "group of death," done properly
Across all 12 groups the means are statistically indistinguishable (ANOVA F = 0.16, p = 0.999). That is not boredom, it is the fingerprint of FIFA's pot system balancing every group. The difficulty lives in the variance, see the next section.
Exploratory data analysis
▸Profiling, structure, and the two pictures that carry the most meaning: the Fogle–Elo scatter and the group-difficulty spread.
Cross-system check: where Fogle and Elo disagree (corrected)
Hover any point. The diagonal is rough agreement, teams above the line are rated higher by Elo than by Fogle, below the line the reverse. Both axes are ranked inside the 35-team set that has both, the only fair way to compare.
Fogle rank vs Elo rank (35 teams with both)
The divergences that actually survive
The biggest real gaps once the rank scales are matched. Green means Fogle is more bullish than Elo, blue means Elo is more bullish. USA is the cleanest signal (host optimism the market prices and Elo ignores).
Within-set rank gap, Fogle vs Elo
Group difficulty: same average, different animal
Groups F and I tie on mean rating (1.675), but they are nothing alike. Group F (Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Tunisia) is a balanced grinder, SD 0.37, no soft team. Group I (France, Norway, Senegal, Iraq) is top-heavy, SD 1.03, France strolls while three teams fight for second and Iraq absorbs the hardest single schedule on the board.
Completeness and missingness
Missingness is not random. Elo is absent for 13 teams, none in the top six, they are upper-middle UEFA (Norway, Czech Republic, Turkey, Sweden, Scotland, Bosnia), four AFC sides, and the three weakest minnows. Polymarket exists only for nine favorites. Nothing was imputed.
The gauntlet: owl → potato → owl
▸The process Michael loves. First read the numbers like an owl. Then turn into the potato and attack with no mercy. Then return to the owl to weigh which blows landed and render the real verdict.
- The rating is a goal engine, not a power score. Fogle is a "goal supremacy" scale and the spread column is literally rating minus rating, so France 2.8 vs Curacao −1.1 is a falsifiable prediction of about a 3.9-goal margin. tail extrapolation untested, see Owl 2
- The left skew is the 48-team expansion made visible. Every outlier sits at the weak end because the field absorbed a tail of minnows. The shape is telling us about the format, not just the teams.
- The disagreements with Elo are systematic, and that is where the money is. Fogle looked far more bullish on African sides (Ghana, South Africa) and on the USA. the CAF half was a measurement bug, see Owl 2
- The "group of death" is a variance illusion. F and I tie on mean, but F is a balanced grinder and I is top-heavy with France plus Iraq's brutal schedule. "Hardest group" splits into hardest-to-win vs hardest-to-escape.
- Groups being statistically identical is the seeding working, not noise. p = 0.999 across 12 groups is manufactured by the pot system, so most "group of death" talk is theater.
- The sheet has less independent information than it looks. Strip the Fogle-derived columns and you have one rating, one partial validator (Elo), and a nine-team market sliver.
- Polymarket looks far more top-heavy than Fogle. Fogle ties Spain and France at 2.8, the market splits them about 2 to 1. over-read an incomplete capture, see Owl 2
- Argentina is the divergence at the top nobody flags. Fogle has them 5th, Elo has them 2nd-highest, above France, England and Brazil. real but not "the biggest", see Owl 2
- The host bump is the cleanest market-vs-model example. Hosts sit above the field, Elo is unimpressed, n = 3 forbids a significance claim.
Spawned as an independent agent with no stake in the analysis, told to verify every attack against the actual files before making it.
- FATALThe CAF thesis is a rank-scale artifact. "Ghana +43, South Africa +43" subtracts a within-field Fogle rank (1–48) from a global Elo world rank (running to 81). Re-rank both inside the shared 35 and Ghana's gap is −1, South Africa −5. The real biggest Fogle tilt is the USA. The project's own EDA file had the correct numbers; the narrative used the broken ones.
- FATALThe "9-team tournament" reading misreads an incomplete scrape. Polymarket quotes the whole field, the analyst captured nine favorites. Their 1.02 sum is where the download stopped, not evidence the other 39 have no title equity.
- SERIOUSThe host test should never have run. Welch p=0.048 exists only because two hosts are identical at 1.8. A random three-team draw beats the host mean 26.6% of the time, and Canada (1.5) is below the field median, so "all three hosts above the field" is false.
- SERIOUSArgentina is cherry-picked. By the same gap logic, Panama (+9) and South Korea (+5) are bigger Elo-over-Fogle divergences.
- SERIOUSr=0.89 is two reputation proxies agreeing. No backtest, no ground truth, no falsification criterion.
- SLOPPY"Only 6 reach 2.5" is wrong (four do). Normality tests on a 0.1 grid with 36 ties are meaningless. Spain's Elo is 93 points above France's, so their Poly gap is not "pure path." The rename and the analyst-added columns are undisclosed, yet the CAF claim runs through a hand-typed column.
Every potato hit was re-checked against the data before being accepted. Most landed.
Conceded, corrections now binding
- FATAL The CAF divergence was a unit-mismatch bug. Re-ranked within the shared 35, Ghana goes −43 → −1, South Africa −43 → −5. What survives is narrower and cleaner: the largest real Fogle-over-Elo tilt is USA (−13), then Ivory Coast and Tunisia (−6). Host optimism, not a continental verdict.
- FATAL The "9-team tournament" line is retracted. Capture artifact. What stands: Spain 33% vs France 17% is a real, if partial, market split.
- fix That split is not "pure path": Spain's Elo is 93 points above France's, two systems say Spain is simply better. Fogle's tie is the outlier.
- fix No provable host effect. Canada is below the median, the Welch p is an artifact. The honest residue: the market prices a host tilt (USA is the #1 Fogle-over-Elo team), n = 3 forbids proof.
- fix Argentina reframed: not the largest divergence, but the most decision-relevant one, because it sits among the contenders (Elo #2 vs Fogle #5).
- fix Four teams reach 2.5, not six. Normality testing on this discrete grid is decorative. Provenance (single source, four self-contradictions, analyst-added columns) travels with the numbers from here on.
Where the potato overreached
- "Eight columns are deterministic" is not a rebuttal, it confirms Owl-1 point 6 stated hostilely. True, and well sharpened, but not a new fatal flaw.
- The gut punch is rhetorically total but analytically partial: the potato itself conceded the Fogle–Elo agreement is robust, not a leverage trick. A market snapshot that tracks a results-based Elo at ρ = 0.91 is a reasonable coarse prior, low resolution, not worthless.
What is left standing
UEFA and CONMEBOL dominance, the left-skewed expansion field, strong Fogle–Elo order agreement, the variance-not-mean reading of the "group of death," and one actionable market gap (USA). The gauntlet earned its keep: it killed a headline that was a bug, downgraded three stories from insight to texture, and left a smaller, truer set of claims.
How to actually use these ratings
▸Tied back to the project's own betting principles.
- Treat Fogle as a coarse prior, then override it. It is a one-dimensional, single-source, 0.1-grid snapshot. The betting principles say xG is the foundation and Elo beats reputation, so use Fogle to frame the matchup, then let xG and matchup work move the price.
- The one survivable market gap is USA host optimism. Fogle rates the USA 13 rank-spots above Elo. That is the market pricing the host bump the principles predict, fade or back it deliberately, do not assume it is free value.
- Argentina is the contender to form your own view on. Elo treats them as a co-favorite, Fogle a clear notch below Spain and France. If Elo is the sharper instrument, that is where a futures look starts.
- Ignore "group of death" averages, read the variance. Group F is where favorites drop points (no easy game), Group I is where the second qualifier is a coin flip behind France. Same mean, opposite betting texture.
- Do not bet the rating itself. No outcomes back it, it cannot separate attack from defense, and it is silent on travel, venue, and lineups, the very edges 2026 rewards.
Method, sources, and files
▸The pipeline ran exactly as requested. One canonical cleaned dataset was built first (single source of truth, reconciled to control totals: 48 teams, 12 groups of 4, six confederations, three hosts). Two skill agents then analyzed it in parallel and blind to each other via the parallel-skill-orchestrator: one applying statistical-analysis, one applying exploratory-data-analysis. Their findings were synthesized, read by an owl, attacked by an independently spawned potato, and reconciled by a second owl. This page is the output-html step.
Inputs
- Fogle Market Power Ratings: Jeff Fogle, "Figure it Out" Substack, May 31 2026. Market-consensus goal-supremacy estimate (not a personal pick). 48 teams.
- Elo: international-football.net, Jun 8 2026 (35/48). Polymarket win%: Jun 2026 (9/48). Both from the workbook's xG & Stats sheet.
Artifacts written to ratings_analysis/
A correction worth keeping: the statistical agent's rank-divergence table compared a 1–48 Fogle rank against a global Elo world rank, which manufactured a false "Fogle loves CAF" signal. The EDA agent computed it correctly within the shared set. When two agents disagree on a derived number, that disagreement is the audit doing its job.