The World Cup Starts Today Football's main event begins June 11 at the Estadio Azteca and ends July 19 at MetLife Stadium and in between, FIFA is running the largest experiment in the tournament's history. Forty-eight teams. Twelve groups. A knockout bracket that now starts at a round of 32. One hundred and four matches across 39 days, played in three countries at once. The US–Canada–Mexico format sounds chaotic, but the logistics are surprisingly sane: the 16 host cities are split into regional clusters, and each team stays inside one of them, so nobody is flying coast to coast between group games. The expanded field cuts both ways. On one hand, four nations are at a World Cup for the very first time: Uzbekistan, Jordan, Cape Verde, and Curaçao. On the other, the qualifying graveyard is crowded even at 48 spots: Italy missed out yet again (the third tournament in a row), Ukraine lost a playoff to Sweden, and Poland, Denmark, Serbia, and Nigeria are all watching from home. Rather than rank the contenders, here are the storylines that will actually decide how this tournament is remembered. Two GOATs, one ending each. Messi is 38. Ronaldo is 41. Both are almost certainly playing their final World Cup, and the symmetry is brutal: one already has the trophy, the other doesn't. Argentina arrives as defending champion with a squad engineered for exactly one purpose - Scaloni's great innovation was building a collective that absorbs Messi's defensive absence and amplifies everything else. Portugal's situation is messier and more interesting: Martínez has arguably the most talented midfield in the tournament in Bruno Fernandes and Bernardo Silva, plus Rafael Leão's chaos on the wing, and his hardest tactical problem isn't any opponent. It's how much of the attack still has to run through a 41-year-old who refuses to be a supporting actor. The Deschamps farewell. France's manager steps down after this tournament, closing a 14-year era that already includes one World Cup. His squad remains absurd, genuine depth at every position and Mbappé has personal business to settle: another title, and Klose's all-time World Cup scoring record within reach. With Dembélé arriving as the current Ballon d'Or holder fresh off another Champions League, France doesn't need a fairy tale. They just need to be themselves for seven games. Spain's youth revolution, fully armed. The team that won Euro 2024 wasn't a fluke, it was the first harvest. Yamal, Pedri, Gavi, and Nico Williams have now had two more years together, and de la Fuente's Spain bears no resemblance to the sterile possession machine of the 2010s: this version attacks fast, wide, and relentlessly. The models love them, and for once the eye test agrees. England, again, but different. Sixty years without a trophy is no longer a statistic, it's an identity. What's changed is the manager: Tuchel ripped out the cautious approach, installed a pressing game, and qualified with a perfect record without conceding a single goal while ignoring several famous names and absorbing the tabloid fury that came with it. Kane finally learned how to win at Bayern. Whether that's transferable is the entire question. Open orb.club/c/worldcup and pick your team!

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