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Football supporters of a certain age will remember the afternoon of June 24, 1994 and the sight of an overheated John Aldridge and Jack Charlton clashing with officials on the touchline during the Republic of Ireland's loss to Mexico in Orlando.
World Cup 2026 takes 48 teams back to North America, this time for a vast tournament spanning the United States and its neighbours to the north and south. There will be stifling heat. There will be long distances and short turnarounds. For some of the competing teams, that's not the half of it.
2026 will be a World Cup that demands logistical prowess as much as on-pitch performance. None of us will talk about it after the fact but the teams behind the scenes into the latter stages will be pulling off little miracles of their own.
Only Uzbekistan have a tougher World Cup 2026 group stage than England
Data engineer and football analyst Bob Yakubov, who works near the Kansas City base where England will set up camp, has plugged in a World Cup-sized amount of data and calculated a difficulty rating for the group stage schedules of all 48 teams.
According to Yakubov's group stage 'load score' rating, the Three Lions face the second-toughest schedule across their first three games in the United States this summer.
England begin their Group L campaign against Croatia at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Wednesday, June 17.
Their middle game sees them take on Ghana at Gillette Stadium near Boston on Tuesday, June 23, and they'll play Panama in their last group fixture at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Saturday, June 27.
The traveling distance, kick-off time, temperature, humidity and altitude for each of England's group games gives it a set of 'burden' index scores. England are top of the pops for burdens of recovery time, heat and a 'sequence penalty', while their travel burden is also at the extreme end of the scale.
England will travel nearly 9,000 miles in the group stage and endure a temperature high of 29C. The Ghana match, expected to be the coolest of the three, will pack an oppressive estimated humidity of 68%.
Match | Stadium | Travel | Kick-off | Temperature | Humidity | Altitude |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Match 1: Croatia | AT&T Stadium | 1,467km | 15:00 | 29C | 61% | 169m |
Match 2: Ghana | Gillette Stadium | 3,976km | 16:00 | 22C | 68% | 84m |
Match 3: Panama | MetLife Stadium | 3,503km | 17:00 | 25C | 67% | 9m |
England boss Thomas Tuchel can at least be thankful for a lack of altitude, but an overall load score of 74.2 (out of 100) is higher than 46 of the other 47 teams in the competition.
Only Uzbekistan (overall score 80.0) can lay claim to a tougher experience, courtesy of the greater humidity of NRG Stadium, where they'll play Portugal, and the higher altitude of Estadio Azteca, where they play their first-ever World Cup finals fixture against Colombia.
Uzbekistan will be based in Atlanta, where they will take on Congo DR at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in their third match.
Curacao, Congo DR and Uruguay complete the top five toughest paths through the group stage. Steve Clarke's Scotland will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and will benefit from two consecutive matches at Gillette Stadium.
At the opposite end of the scale from Uzbekistan are Paraguay. Gustavo Alfaro's team will base themselves in San Francisco and play two consecutive matches at Levi's Stadium.
The other, against co-hosts the United States, will be as close as SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
