The World Cup starts in less than a week. Are you actually up for it? I think I am, I am sure I will be once we get going. A quick look at how I’ll navigate the tournament in terms of the newsletter and some other picky bits to start the weekend. Issue 104. Go.

The World Cup is one of those events that everyone says they're excited for, but I always need the first few days to hook me in. So the tempo of the newsletter might be a little different across the next few weeks.

Club football gives us months to build opinions. We know the teams, we know the players, and we have enough evidence to work out what's real and what's noise. A World Cup is different.

Three group games. Short turnarounds. Constant narrative swings. By the time you've properly analysed one result, the tournament has already moved on. Not ideal for a twice weekly newsletter.

Rather than trying to break down every game in isolation in the same way that I have done for the Premier League, I'll be focusing on the temperature of the tournament as a whole.

What trends are emerging? Which assumptions are proving correct? Which teams are growing into the competition and which are simply surviving it? There’ll be some data where possible, but small sample sizes don’t offer concrete evidence.

Some editions will focus on individual matches when there's something genuinely worth discussing. Others will step back and look at the bigger picture. That’s the beauty of running your own newsletter, you can bend it into any shape you want.

The aim isn't to document every kick of the ball. It's to understand what kind of World Cup we're actually watching. The standard won't change. The parameters will.

Unless you have been living under a rock these past few years, the World Cup is pitching its sporting wagon in North America in six days time. The biggest edition of the tournament ever, the lukest warm of build ups it must be said.

That’s not to say I won’t be watching as much of it as possible- even though timezones will be working against me, it just feels like the whole thing has been overshadowed by so much else.

You can pin this on Trump for a number of reasons. Trump being Trump, Trump vs Iran, the list will go on. Then again, even if you strip out the political spectrum in all of this, it’s also the extortion racket which is ticket prices and travel to the games via train.

Ludicrous prices when it comes to public transport. Ludicrous rulings regarding bringing in your own water bottles. Everything to squeeze more dollars out of those trying to enjoy the World Cup in person, it will be much easier to enjoy back home on your sofa (or bed).

Of course, the kickoff times are far from ideal but at the same time they are not insurmountable either. There’s a lot of World Cup group stage games that will be played in the dead of night but there’s a lot lacking any real jeopardy.

The 48-team format is far from ideal, clunky really. It’s double the size of the World Cup held in the USA 32 years ago, it’s hader to get knocked out of the tournament after your first three matches.

48 start, 32 advance. 72 group stage matches, just to wave goodbye to 16 nations. A lot of football for football’s sake. Maybe reinforcing the fact that bigger is not always better when it comes to tournament football.

Then again, I could be wrong, it could be an absolute barnburner from the opening fixture next Thursday. I guess personally part of the reason for the slight detachment is that I am absolute completist when it comes to major tournament football.

If I can’t have it all, I don’t want anything has by large been my edict since the 2002 World Cup. I’ve quit jobs to especially make sure I can watch everything, it’s that level of buy-in that has fuelled the desire to create things such as this.

At the same time, time moves on. You get older, you actually like going to bed. We live in a clips and highlights society, you can wake up and see all the best bits and still get eight hours nod in the bank.

Which means, once we get underway, I like many others will be beset by tournament fever. More teams at the top table of world football, more narratives that will unfold during the World Cup.

It’s easy to dismiss the build up of the tournament, it’s hard to turn away once we get going.

One of the clearest ways to understand how a team will function in a tournament like this is to ignore the squad sheet and look at something simpler: where the goals actually come from.

Because while we spend most of our time talking about depth, systems, and tactical flexibility, international football still often collapses into something much more basic once the games start: who scores when it matters.

Some teams share that responsibility across multiple players. Others are structurally dependent on one individual to carry the attacking output. There is no right answer but some methods are more successful than others.

I’ve pulled together a simple “Talisman Rating” — the percentage of a nation’s World Cup squad goals that come from their primary scorer (this analysis is across each of the players called up to the 48 squads)

Player’s Goals / Total Squad Goals = Talisman Rating

It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t tell you everything. But it does tell you something important: how exposed each team is if their main source of goals is neutralised, contained, or simply off form and you won’t get this anywhere else.

Here are the top 10 talismen as a percentage of their international goals versus their respective squad as a whole:

That's an absurd number. Nearly 4 in every 5 goals scored by Bosnia's squad have come from Džeko. The gap between Bosnia and everyone else is huge. They're not just reliant on him; they're structurally dependent on him. He’s 40, this cannot go on forever

The interesting thing here is not the players. It's that even elite nations still lean heavily on a single scorer. This method has worked twice when it comes to winning a World Cup, what price it happening under England this summer?

At just over 50%, Jordan Ayew accounts for roughly one in every two goals scored by Ghana’s squad. It creates a clear threshold effect: once a team crosses the 50% line, you’re no longer talking about “a key player in the attack”, you’re talking about the attack.

That matters in tournament football. Because if that single outlet is marked out of a game, or simply doesn’t click across a three-game group stage, the entire scoring structure becomes fragile very quickly.

Ghana sit exactly on that line, one player away from either carrying them, or constraining them. If England can keep Ayew quiet in their group stage clash, the task of earning three points suddenly becomes a lot easier.

The percentage is lower than I expected. That suggests Norway's attacking output may be more distributed than the narrative suggests.

Haaland is still the focal point, but perhaps not to the same extent that Messi is for Argentina or Kane is for England. They are many people’s dark horses to win the competition, you can understand why with this level of attacking output.

One final pattern in the data is worth highlighting: leadership and goal dependency are closely linked. Eight of the ten players in this list are also their national team captains. The only exceptions are Brazil’s Neymar and Norway’s Erling Haaland.

This suggests that the armband is not just symbolic. In most cases, it reflects where responsibility already sits within the team. Both measured in terms of output and expectation.

When a side is this reliant on one player for goals, leadership naturally consolidates around them. The captaincy, in many of these cases, simply formalises a reality that already exists on the pitch.

While we can clearly see where the attacking burden lies across these nations, the bigger question becomes whether those carrying it can translate that responsibility into tournament success when it matters most in July.

The data makes clear where the attacking burden lies across these nations, the bigger question is whether those carrying it can translate that responsibility into success when it matters most in July.

It was almost a deal in January but Andy Robertson probably looked at the bin fire that was Tottenham at the start of the year and thought “ah, hang on” but now it is official: the Scottish international has swapped Liverpool for Tottenham.

A move that I think will be a rather shrewd one under Roberto De Zerbi, not necessarily because of the player and manager relationship but because it brings a player who has won everything.

Social media has created this aversion where player over 30 = bad but you look at a club like Spurs or even Chelsea for that matter and think, some experience in their ranks would make things a lot better. Good business, done early. Good work all round.

After Michael O’Neill decided that he did not want the Blackburn Rovers job full time, a vacancy has appeared at Ewood Park and when you account for the managerial turnover at the club, the list of candidates was going to be a short one.

Then again, supporters did not expect it to be as short as a previous manager and with Tony Mowbray being in charge, Rovers fans (my mate included) have already had the enthusiasm sucked out of next season. Roll on May 2027.

Michael to Martin now and it has been suggested that Celtic are going to keep theirs on and make their current interim (twice over) their permanent appointment for the 2026/27 campaign.

What percentage of that is down to rewarding the man who led the Hoops to the Scottish Premiership. What percentage of that is down to not being able to attract anyone else? I’ll let you weigh that one out.

Thomas Frank has said he won’t be rushing into management this summer. It’s all very well saying that but surely there has to be interest in the first place. It’s a bit like me announcing my retirement from international football I guess.

Ooooh look at me, giving out quotes as an expert.

As an aside, if you’ve got a newsletter, website or podcast and you want some words or a voice. Please feel free to get in touch, always happy to give a soundbite.

Right, that’s the end of issue 104 as word continues to spread around the football world.

This isn’t a newsletter that follows the crowd. It sets the lens through which you see the game and more than 220 subscribers are now viewing it through that lens.

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Issue 105 drops Tuesday, I’ll be back with another round of insight, analysis and trends that matter. Any feedback or comments on this issue, contact me below:

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