TACTICAL THERMALS

Tactics collapse under stress.
Tactical Thermals models when — and why.
Heat, altitude, and air quality aren’t just variables.
They’re opponents.

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Tactics Fail Under Stress

Altitude, heat, and air quality change the game.
Tactical Thermals quantifies what breaks first — pressing, substitutions, and momentum.Not a guess.
Quantified.

Traditional Metrics Collapse Under Climate Stress

Tactical Thermals introduces a new layer of analysis.
Custom metrics — including TA-xG, TCI, and PAR — track how environmental stress disrupts tactical systems, substitution patterns, and player output.
This is football under stress — quantified.

Built on Data. Trained in Stress

Over 2,500 World Cup and Copa América matches analyzed.
Each match merged with environmental records — temperature, humidity, altitude, air quality, solar radiation.
All indexed into the Tactical Climate Index (TCI), then modeled to detect decay in performance and substitution patterns.Match review was conducted by a UEFA A-licensed coach.
Market pricing data was layered in to surface volatility blind spots and inefficiencies.

Football Is Changing. Climate Is the Variable.

As the game shifts to hotter, higher, more volatile conditions, traditional analytics fall short.
Tactical Thermals adds a missing layer — detecting collapse before it’s visible.“Environmental considerations are paramount to athletic performance. Heat, altitude, and cold impact not just physiology, but also cognitive function, decision-making, and recovery.”— Dr. Christopher T. Minson
Kenneth M. and Kenda H. Singer Endowed Professor, Human Physiology
Chief Science Officer, NatureQuant
University of Oregon
Shared in support of Tactical Thermals’ mission.

Where Tactical Thermals Fits

Built for the moments where margins vanish:Coaches — Adapt tactics and substitutions under stress
Federations — Optimize training and fixtures for heat and altitude
Analysts — Integrate TCI into pressing and xG models
Broadcasters — Surface collapse and volatility in real time
Markets — Detect inefficiencies in weather-neutral pricing modelsFrom touchline to timeline, Tactical Thermals aligns stress modeling with decision-making.

Built to Scale

Tactical Thermals began with a question:
How does climate rewrite the match?What started as a dataset is now scaling into a performance operating system — with proprietary metrics, predictive models, and tactical tools that plug directly into decision workflows.From pitch to platform, this is football reimagined through data and stress.

The Research

Developed for submission to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
2,500+ matches analyzed.
Custom metrics — TA-xG, TCI, SII — built to model collapse under stress.
Tactical Thermals redefines how environmental variables reshape match outcomes.

Get Involved

Tactical Thermals is entering final review for Sloan.We’re inviting analysts, federations, and researchers to contribute, test, and challenge the system.

Built for the Edge of Performance

Tactical Thermals is an independent research project connecting performance science, tactical analytics, and extreme environments.Developed for the 2026 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
Designed to scale.
Ready for the 2026 World Cup.
Led by James Acree — athlete, analyst, and builder of the next era in sports science.

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