With a viewing audience in the billions, the quadrennial FIFA World Cup is undoubtedly the largest sporting event in the world. Every four years, international club football is put on pause as the world’s 32 best senior men’s national teams gather for a month-long tournament to compete for the title of World Cup Champion and the FIFA World Cup Trophy.

The group of champions is small and elite. Since the tournament’s inception in 1930, only eight different countries – seven of whom will appear in this year’s tournament – have become world champions. This year, the world’s biggest football stars will gather in Qatar for an unusual winter edition of the tournament.

With 32 teams competing in 64 matches over the next month, there’s a lot of football to keep track of. That’s why we’ve compiled a World Cup 2022 workbook with everything you need to track your team throughout the tournament.

Learn about all of the teams competing in the tournament, keep track of every match, stay on top of the group stage tables, and track the champion’s journey throughout the knockout stage. Check out the workbook throughout the tournament, as we’ll be updating it with the results of every match.

Read on to learn more about our World Cup 2022 workbook and all of the Spreadsheet.com features it uses.

Know When – and Who – Your Favorite Team is Playing

If you’re following the World Cup, you have to know when your team is playing. Whether you’re cheering on the Socceroos, Stars and Stripes, Les Bleus, or Los Ticos, the Match Schedule worksheet has start times for all 64 tournament matches in one place.

Create a copy of the workbook and use the time zone selector at the top of the sheet to display match start times in your local time. With conditional formatting and the team selector, matches featuring your favorite team will be highlighted so you can spot them at a glance.

With two built-in Calendar views – one to display games in local time, the other to display them in your selected time zone – you can quickly get a visual overview of the upcoming day or week’s matches.

And with iCal link sharing, you can subscribe to this View and have all of the matches added to your personal calendar application automatically.

Check out the Teams worksheet to learn more about your team – or your opponent. See each team’s group stage opponent and information about their historical performance in the World Cup.

Once you’ve read up on the teams, explore the rich data types – like Select, Rating, and Related rows – that are included in the worksheet.

Track Every Match and Stay on Top of the Tables

In the Group Stage Match Results sheet, we’ll be recording the result of every match and keeping summaries of each team’s points, record, and goal differential. Each opponent is entered as a Related row value – click on an opponent’s cell to see their row from the Teams worksheet in an expanded view.

Want a quick view of the standings without diving into individual match results? The Tables worksheet aggregates data from the Group Stage Match Results worksheet to display each team’s points, record, group ranking, and more.

The top two teams from each group – automatically highlighted with conditional formatting – will advance to the knockout stage.

Follow the Road to the Final

After the group stage, follow the remaining teams on their road to the final with the Knockout Stage Bracket worksheet. Advancing teams are listed with Related row values in the Round of 16 columns. Then, as the scores for each match are entered, conditional logic formulas automatically advance the winner of each match to the next round.

Follow along with the live workbook as we update the bracket throughout the knockout round, or make a copy of the workbook to create your own predictions.

What to Expect from the Americans and Group B

For the American team, this year’s World Cup will mark their first tournament appearance since 2014, having missed the 2018 tournament – their only missed tournament since 1986.

A lot has happened in those eight years. The team has gone through four different head coaches, the country has had three different presidents, and their female counterparts won the Women’s World Cup. Twice.

The US, of course, is hoping for another trip to the knockout stage like 2014. Unfortunately, they find themselves in Group B, this tournament’s “group of death”.

Group B has the most parity of any group by a significant margin. Measured by both FIFA rank and points, Group B has the smallest standard deviations in both stats of any of the eight groups. Group B is also the only group with teams ranked consecutively – Wales (19) and Iran (20).

It’s not just the parity that makes it difficult, as the teams in Group B also have the highest average rank (15) in the tournament.

Judging by rank, England has a clear advantage over the rest of the group, but Iran, the United States, and Wales are all within five ranking positions of one another. England should be a lock to advance out of the group stage, but it will be a hard fought battle among the rest of the group to secure the second spot.

The US is the odds-on favorite to secure the group’s second knockout stage berth, albeit by a very slim margin. They’ll play their first match against Wales on Monday, November 21 at 2PM EST.

‍The 2022 FIFA World Cup begins Sunday, November 20. In the United States, all matches will be broadcast on FOX and FS1.