STRATA
entry 12 · specimens drilled from the 2026 world cup — all 104 matches · depth = km run per match (extra time excluded from averages) · bright seams = high-speed metres
THE RACK
Every specimen drilled as a core: depth is distance run, the strata are FIFA's five speed
bands, hot seams near the surface are high-speed metres. Browse the 48 nations, or open any
drawer for its players. Pick a seam to hang the cores on a shared datum and compare it directly.
archive
teams
all specimens
sort
intensity
depth
name
number
depth scale
per match
whole tournament
seam
Z1 walk Z2 jog
Z3 run Z4 high-speed
Z5 sprint
units
km
mi
stratum
GK DF
MF FW
complete cores only
every nation
plot
nations
players
position
GK DF
MF FW
FIELD NOTES
Every number on this page is drilled from FIFA's official post-match summary reports —
no other source, no estimates. All 104 matches , the final included — Spain 1–0 Argentina,
19 July 2026.specimen is any player with at least 10 km drilled over the tournament.
FIFA's reports carry no minutes-played column, so depth is real distance covered — never
extrapolated to a per-90 rate: a core is the material we actually pulled out of the ground."Per match" counts any appearance as one match. A substitute's 15-minute cameo and a full
90 weigh the same in the average, because the reports carry no minutes to weight them by — so
compare full-match cores to full-match cores, and read a bench player's per-match figure as a
floor, not a rate.bench appearances (more matches entered as a substitute than
started, per the official line-up sheets) are marked with a fractured rim — handle with
care: substitutes run hotter per minute on fresh legs, so their seams look brighter than a
full-match core would. A started match counts as whole even if the player came off — the
reports carry no minutes, so we can't see when. And low distance alone never fractures a core:
some specimens simply walk.Per-match averages exclude the 9 extra-time matches (a 120-minute match inflates
distance by a third). The strata are FIFA's five speed bands:
Z1 walk 0-7 · Z2 jog 7-15 · Z3 run 15-20 · Z4 high-speed 20-25 · Z5 sprint 25+ km/h.Comparing seams. Selecting a seam re-hangs every core from the top of that stratum,
the way field geologists correlate boreholes on a marker bed: the dashed datum line is shared,
so seam thickness reads directly, thickest first. Each specimen card carries an assay :
the five strata measured against the field average, in percentage points. And the
sediment triangle (soil scientists plot sand, silt and clay on the same chart) places
every specimen by its mix of walking (Z1), cruising (Z2+Z3) and high-speed (Z4+Z5) metres.
The three always sum to 100%, so the raw mix is a composition. Footballers barely vary,
so each edge is stretched to the tournament's 5th–95th percentile to pull the dots apart — a dot's
plotted spot is therefore its stretched composition, a stated lens, never a reordering;
hover any dot for its true percentages. Players are coloured by position (keepers, walking almost
exclusively, sit apart in their own corner) and shown as complete cores only.
One more core, pulled up and read aloud…
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