Does Age Still Matter?

Age Distribution of Playing Time

Every bar represents the number of match appearances made by players of that age. Players appearing in multiple matches are counted once per match, giving a true picture of who is actually getting on the pitch — not just squad registration. ^[†]

Top Speed vs Age

Each point is a player's peak recorded speed at this tournament. Colour represents age bracket. Points above 32 km/h are elite sprinters regardless of age — look for the orange and red dots pushing into that zone.

Distance Covered vs Age

Distance per 90 minutes played, plotted against age. A flat or upward trend among veterans would indicate elite fitness management — look for 35+ dots in the 10,000 m+ zone.

Sprint Count vs Age

Sprint counts (high-speed running bursts) reveal explosive capacity better than raw distance. Older players are typically managed to conserve sprints — but outliers tell a different story.

Goals by Age Group

90 goals analysed. Age at the date of the match. Own goals excluded. The 27–29 peak is consistent with professional football literature on peak scoring years — but the 33–35 cohort outperforms those under 21.

The Second-Half Drop — Does Age Change It?

The analytics graph holds 268 match appearances with ~24 cumulative snapshots each — a full within-match time series of distance, speed, and sprint counts. By comparing each player's distance rate in the first 48 minutes against the remainder of the match, we can measure fatigue precisely per age group.

Does Output Drop Across the Tournament?

For the 172 players who appeared in multiple matches, this tracks average distance per 90 minutes from their first match to their second (and third). Cumulative fatigue, load management, and rotation all show up here.

How Managers Deploy by Age

Average minutes played per match appearance, broken down by age group. This reveals whether coaches are protecting veteran legs with earlier substitutions — or trusting them to go the distance.

Does Squad Age Predict Results?

Each point is a team in a single match. X axis = average age of players with analytics data for that match. Y axis = goal difference. Colour shows result (win / draw / loss). No strong linear pattern would suggest experience and youth both win at this level.

Veterans Defying the Clock

These players are aged 35 or older and recorded top speeds above 24 km/h — putting them in the elite physical bracket of the entire tournament. Click any name to explore their full knowledge graph entity.

† Appearance counts come from fifa:PlayerMatchAnalyticsReport nodes with fifa:totalDistance > 50, deduplicated to the highest-distance snapshot per player-match pair to remove intermediate snapshots. Age is calculated at tournament start (11 June 2026) from fifa:birthDate.

Top Scorers — Age Context

The leading scorers of the tournament, showing their age bracket and team. Click any name to open their Knowledge Graph entity. Footnote citations link to the OpenLink /describe endpoint for that player.

Age Group Summary

Consolidated per-group averages across all 954 recorded appearances. Distance and speed columns use the best snapshot per player-match appearance.

Explore the Knowledge Graph

PREFIX fifa: 
PREFIX rdfs: 

SELECT ?playerName ?birthDate (MAX(?spd) AS ?maxSpeed) (SUM(?dist) AS ?totalDist)
FROM 
FROM 
WHERE {
  ?m a fifa:Match ; fifa:hasPlayerAnalyticsReport ?report .
  ?report fifa:player ?player ; fifa:topSpeed ?spd ; fifa:totalDistance ?dist .
  ?player rdfs:label ?playerName ; fifa:birthDate ?birthDate .
}
GROUP BY ?playerName ?birthDate
ORDER BY DESC(?maxSpeed)
LIMIT 30

PREFIX fifa: 
PREFIX rdfs: 

SELECT ?playerName ?birthDate ?teamName ?minute ?matchId
FROM 
WHERE {
  ?m a fifa:Match ; fifa:matchId ?matchId ; fifa:date ?date ; fifa:hasGoal ?goal .
  ?goal fifa:player ?player ; fifa:goalMinute ?minute .
  ?player rdfs:label ?playerName ; fifa:birthDate ?birthDate .
  OPTIONAL { ?goal fifa:team ?t . ?t rdfs:label ?teamName }
}
ORDER BY ?birthDate

PREFIX fifa: 
PREFIX rdfs: 
PREFIX xsd: 

SELECT ?playerName ?birthDate (MAX(?spd) AS ?maxSpeed)
       (SUM(?dist) AS ?totalDist) (SUM(?spr) AS ?totalSprints)
FROM 
FROM 
WHERE {
  ?m a fifa:Match ; fifa:hasPlayerAnalyticsReport ?report .
  ?report fifa:player ?player ; fifa:topSpeed ?spd ; fifa:totalDistance ?dist .
  ?player rdfs:label ?playerName ; fifa:birthDate ?bd .
  BIND(xsd:dateTime(?bd) AS ?birthDate)
  OPTIONAL { ?report fifa:sprints ?spr }
  FILTER(?bd < "1989-01-01T00:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime)
}
GROUP BY ?playerName ?birthDate
ORDER BY DESC(?maxSpeed)