Thousands of fans attending World Cup matches this summer are experiencing professional soccer live for the first time — the atmosphere, the spectacle, the goals. But underneath all of it is another game entirely. The pass you didn’t see coming. A player’s subtle movement to corral a pass. The strategy that cracked open the defense. 

Brennan Klein, director for Northeastern University’s NetSI Sport research group, offers three things to watch for in person — because once you learn to notice them, you can’t unsee them.

South Africa defeated South Korea 1-0 on Wednesday night, a historic result that secured its place in the World Cup knockout stage for the first time in the country’s history of World Cup appearances. 

South Africa will face Canada on Sunday, in the tournament’s first knockout round game.

An underdog in the tournament given its 61st ranking by FIFA, South Africa began the World Cup with a 2-0 loss to host country Mexico, managing only three shots – none on target. But the beginnings of South Africa’s turnaround could be seen in the data. Across its three group-stage games, South Africa only surrendered three goals, leaning on its defense to withstand offensive pressure and regain possession of the ball. 

World Cup 2026 has already provided compelling match ups between the world’s top teams, but in the mix with a battle over the ball is another fight: one over words.

The linguistic divide between “football” and “soccer” has been on full display, as the former’s global dominance runs up against the latter’s use in two of the 2026 World Cup’s host countries, the United States and Canada. The two are among only a few other nations, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, that refer to the sport as “soccer.” The rest of the world is fairly firmly in camp “football.”

Egypt led Belgium 1-0 midway through the second half of its first World Cup match on June 15. As Belgium sent a crossing pass toward the net, multiple defenders tried to prevent Belgium forward Romelu Lukaku from scoring. The pass struck Egypt’s Mohamed Hany’s leg, and the ball goes into the net, tying the game 1-1, and ultimately leading to a draw. 

Own goals – when a team accidentally scores on itself – can be confounding and deflating. They’re also happening at a pace (11 as of Thursday morning) that’s poised to break the tournament record of 12, set in 2018. 

In soccer, a well-timed pressure event can turn the direction of a game in an instant. 

In layman’s terms, a pressure event is when an opposing team takes defensive action against players in possession of the ball to not only restrict their ability to play but to also win it back. 

On average, a high-ranked team has around 150 to 200 pressing actions per match, according to StatsBomb, a sports analytics company and a data provider for Northeastern’s NetSI research group. 

Scots wear orange traffic cones and march down Boston avenues to piercing bagpipe melodies. Japanese soccer fans don game-day face paint as they sink their teeth into authentic Texas barbecue. Algerian visitors stand pridefully in Lawrence, Kansas, as locals unveil a rendering of the Algerian national flag delicately carved into the grass.

A seemingly endless trove of World Cup tourists and their interactions with American locals have been captured and spread across social media since the tournament kicked off earlier in June. The fellowship on display between representatives of far-flung nations has been cause for celebration across America and online, breathing a refreshing strain of positivity into the international competition, observers of the tournament say.

To err is human, the saying goes, but for some of us, ruminating on our errors may obstruct our ability to move forward. Goalies may be especially susceptible to this, as their missteps are not only on display for a stadium to witness but can also determine the fate of entire tournaments. 

It’s something that Tobias Jahn, a decorated goalkeeper for Northeastern University’s Huskies in 2024 and 2025, is all too familiar with. He can recall many moments over the years he has been playing the game where he felt a team’s loss was on him, including one where he had to defend what he thought was a simple corner kick.

There’s been historic ties, resounding victories and disappointing losses.  

And nearly two weeks into the biggest World Cup on record, a few key teams are emerging as the underdogs to watch. 

Among them is Cape Verde, ranked 67th out of 211 in the FIFA Men’s World Ranking, which this week followed up its stunning tie against Spain, ranked 2nd, with another exciting tie in its game against Uruguay, ranked 16th. 

But the Cape Verdeans are far from the only team seemingly competing above its weight class, according to Northeastern’s NetSI Sport research group.  

Sixty-two shots. Zero goals. That’s been the story for Turkey through its first two World Cup games. Despite the scoreboard showing two losses, the data shows the team has dominated quality scoring chances. 

See the graphic below with Turkey’s shot map through its first two games; the white circles show where shots were taken, and the larger the circle the larger the xG (expected goal). Their shots cumulatively produced a total of 3.6 expected goals. For a team considered a dark horse in the tournament, it’s an unlucky result, according to Brennan Klein, who leads Northeastern University’s NetSI Sport research group.

Argentina’s Lionel Messi is officially the top scorer in men’s World Cup history. At least for now. 

After scoring two goals for his home country in a match against Austria last night, the number of goals Messi has bagged in World Cup matches jumped to 18, surpassing the previous record of 16 goals held by Germany’s Miroslav Klose

Messi made his first World Cup goal in 2006 in the country’s matchup against Serbia and Montenegro. In the 2014 World Cup, he scored four goals. In 2018, he scored one. In 2022, he scored seven. And so far this year in just two games he has scored five. 

Playing on a World Cup national team is not unlike being part of a family. Players build brotherly bonds on and off the field in the heat of training, travel and competition. But for a handful of players, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is literally a family affair. 

A record seven pairs of siblings are hitting the pitch this year. For some it is a chance to play on the same team but for others, it’s a chance to compete against each other and give sibling rivalries a whole new dimension. 

Cape Verde turned in another thrilling performance on Sunday in a 2-2 draw with Uruguay, this time with a much different style of play than in their first game, according to the data.

In its previous game, against Spain, Cape Verde’s goalkeeper made seven saves in an historic performance, and Cape Verde only had three successful dribbles. But against Uruguay, they more than tripled the amount of successful dribbles (11) and were much more willing to push the tempo and carry the ball up the pitch. 

With its 4-0 win on Sunday against Tunisia, Japan became the first Asian Football Confederation team in all of World Cup history to score four goals during a game, according to FIFA. The key to Japan’s historic victory was its 3-4-2-1 player formation, according to data analyzed by Northeastern experts.

This is a well-known strategy of arranging players on the pitch in which three defenders are placed in the back, four midfielders are placed in the center and wings, two attackers are placed just above them, and a lone center forward is placed at the very top.

It might just be the windfall that never materialized. 

The influx of tourists and soccer fans spending money on hotels, airfare and other amenities to the 2026 FIFA World Cup was meant to be a boon to the hospitality industry. But with record high ticket prices, expensive airfare and lower demand for hotel rooms, the picture for industry leaders, at least in Boston, is perhaps more mixed than expected. 

Evodio Kaltenecker, associate teaching professor in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, isn’t surprised. He noted that across the business and hospitality sectors, the benefits of these international mega-sporting events are often overstated, adding that “the short-run results are often negative or mixed, and genuine long-term gains are mixed.”

Across 16 cities and three countries, the world’s biggest sporting event is one week old. Here’s a look at some key numbers from the first round of group-stage matches that tell the World Cup story so far. 

3.12 goals

The average goals scored per game is 3.12, up from 2.56 goals per game in the group-stage of round 1 from 2022. Northeastern University data researcher Brennan Klein posited that the increase in average goals per game could be attributed to an expanded field from 32 to 48 teams, now with more lower-ranked teams.

The first week of the 2026 FIFA World Cup is officially in the books. How did the top five ranked teams perform? 

Here’s what data from Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute tells us. 

Spain 

First match: tied with Cape Verde, 0-0

Next match: vs Saudi Arabia, Sunday, Jun 21, 12 p.m. EDT

The data suggests that Spain should have easily won its match up against Cape Verde on Monday. With its dense clusters of passes and dominance near the net, Spain was performing at full force. By contrast, Cape Verde had a far weaker showing and completed far fewer passes and direct shots. 

One week into the World Cup, the early data show that more shots are being taken immediately after the new hydration breaks.

Norway, Brazil, Scotland and Australia all scored goals shortly after the new water breaks.

In the Norway versus Iraq match, Norwegian striker Erling Haaland delivered his team’s opening goal shortly after the first three-minute pause that FIFA has mandated for this year’s World Cup, and his teammate Leo Østigård scored the third goal during the second half of play –  just three minutes after players were allowed to rehydrate and catch their breath.

“Magical.” 

That was the feeling that Brennan Klein, a Northeastern data researcher and lifelong soccer fan, says he felt when he could see his professional work with numbers and statistics come alive at a World Cup match on Tuesday. 

“It was a dream. … I had a phenomenal time,” said Klein, who was one of more than 63,000 people at the Norway versus Iraq match at Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on Tuesday.

The United States and Mexico opened the World Cup with victories, while the third host country, Canada, played to a draw. 

Brennan Klein of Northeastern’s Network Science Institute said he was impressed by the Americans’ strategy and execution, and the data confirmed that conclusion. 

“It was one of the best games I’ve ever seen a United States men’s team play, and there’s a lot of really interesting data to support that claim,” said Klein, who leads the NetSI Sport research team, which is analyzing a host of soccer data throughout the tournament for Northeastern Global News’ blog NGN Offside. 

Spain should have defeated Cape Verde by an overwhelming margin, according to the data produced by Northeastern University’s NetSI Sport research group.

But Cape Verde goalkeeper Josimar Dias, known by his nickname Vozinha, made seven saves, six from within the box, denying one of the top-ranked teams in the tournament an early victory, according to Brennan Klein, director of Northeastern University’s NetSI Sport research group.  

Klein said if you look at Spain’s passing map for the game, you would expect that Spain would have won by a wide margin. That’s because Spain dominated high in the pitch and executed more than a dozen key passes, which are passes that led to a shot on goal. The passing maps show clusters that illustrate Spain’s dominance in front of the net.

At the 31-minute mark of Brazil’s World Cup opening match Saturday against Morocco, forward Vinícius Júnior received a clever pass from his teammate just inside the scoring box. The Brazilian star made a series of quick, precise dribbles with his right foot. Outmaneuvering his defender, he moved into a prime scoring position and fired a blazing, angled shot past the goalie. The ball sailed into the far right corner of the net, tying the game at 1-1. 

From the corner of an otherwise silently studious Curry Student Center at Northeastern University, a chorus of “Ohhh!”s rang out.

Cape Verde’s goalkeeper Vozinha, whose full name is Josimar José Évora Dias, had saved yet another goal in the country’s FIFA World Cup debut against powerhouse Spain. And the nearly dozen football fanatics and casual observers who watched Monday’s match from Northeastern University’s Center for Intercultural Engagement couldn’t contain their excitement.

Qatar’s matchup against Switzerland this weekend in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, is sure to be a hot one — in more ways than one.

The forecasted game-time temperature will be 89 degrees Fahrenheit, according to meteorologists.  

To ensure player well-being, the 2026 FIFA World Cup has implemented mandatory hydration breaks in every match.

But this may not only refuel players, it could also influence game strategy, said Brennan Klein, director of the NetSI Sport research group, at Northeastern University.

The 2026 World Cup is bringing together teams and fans from 48 countries in North America. From travel logistics to the accommodations for hundreds of thousands of visitors, organizers are addressing a host of considerations. For public health officials, one of those factors is also the spread of disease. 

Disease surveillance has taken on a whole new meaning in the post-pandemic world. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may be the event commanding the most attention, but other outbreaks — both domestic and international — are also of concern. COVID-19 is still lingering, global health officials are still monitoring the hantavirus outbreak that rocked a cruise ship last month and here in the U.S., the country is seeing the largest number of measles cases since the disease was considered eradicated in the U.S. in 2000. Meanwhile, more common viruses and bacteria continue to impact our daily lives. 

The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off in the Boston area this weekend and local officials say the region is prepared for crowds, traffic, severe weather and security threats based on its experience with the Boston Marathon, New England Patriots football games and other major events.   

However, transportation challenges and other logistical hiccups are expected. And the anticipated boon for the hospitality industry has not yet materialized, according to experts.

Soccer is like a dance, and every team competing in the FIFA World Cup 2026 will bring its own signature style and choreography to the pitch. 

Team Spain employs a more direct style of play, prioritizing attackers Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal, for example. Team Portugal places a major focus on its midfielders such as Bernardo Silva.    

Who are the top players to watch in the FIFA World Cup 2026? 

Northeastern University Network Science Institute researchers have analyzed an extensive, comprehensive dataset and compiled a list of key players.

Brennan Klein, assistant teaching professor of physics, leads a research team that pairs its study of complex networks with a passion for soccer. 

Team Australia kicked it long from the goalkeeper. Switzerland took a slower approach and preferred short passes over long drives. Spain, on the other hand, tended to string the ball with sharp, sideways passes across the field. 

Those are a few of the takeaways from passing-style graphics that Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute developed of the top soccer teams at the FIFA World Cup 2022 that showcased their most distinctive passing clusters.