Sinch, the communications platform that processes more than 900 billion customer interactions annually, has launched the xC Tracker – an AI-powered tool that monitors every press conference at the 2026 FIFA World Cup to rank national team managers on how often they resort to football cliches rather than offering genuine insight.

Inspired by football’s xG (expected goals) metric, the xC (expected cliches) score measures the likelihood that a manager will fall back on stock phrases — “taking it one game at a time,” “there are no easy games at this level” — instead of providing specific, substantive observations. The tracker covers all 48 national team managers and analyses speech across six languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Arabic.

How the Tracker Works

The system is built on a 205-phrase dictionary of football cliches validated by native-speaking editors. Each phrase is assigned a cliche score between 3 and 10 based on frequency of use. The AI detects exact matches, variations and paraphrased equivalents in real time across pre- and post-match press conferences throughout the tournament.

Live rankings will update throughout the competition, tracking how individual managers’ cliche scores shift after wins and defeats. The tracker will ultimately crown a winner of what Sinch calls the “Press Conference Ballon d’Or.”

“Football gave us xG. We thought it was time someone measured xC, expected cliches. At Sinch, we help businesses communicate effectively under pressure every day. We wanted to find out whether football managers do too.” — Robert Gerstmann, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder, Sinch

The Enterprise Communication Angle

Sinch frames the project as an extension of its core business — helping organisations deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. The company, which generated net sales of US$3 billion in 2025 and employs more than 4,000 people across 60 countries, says the same communication principles that apply to enterprise customer interactions apply equally to high-pressure sporting contexts.

Real-time data from the xC Tracker is available at expectedclichetracker.com.