The Key Takeaways From the FIFA World Cup Draw

More than 80 minutes into Friday’s 2026 FIFA World Cup draw ceremony in Washington, D.C., millions of people all over the globe finally spotted exactly what they came to see.  White plastic balls in bowls!   There they were, on the Kennedy Center stage. Inside those balls were the names of the 39 non-host countries who had already qualified for the World Cup, plus the names of 22 more nations still fighting for the last six spots in the 2026 tournament, which will be played in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. (The host countries automatically qualify for the tournament and their bracket position was already set.) The order in which those balls were plucked out of those bowls over the next few minutes would determine the World Cup matchups in June–and the psychological state of so many soccer fans.  Up to that point, viewers and all the coaches, officials, and media at the Kennedy Center had to sit through pomp and circumstance that, though at times was uplifting, mostly dragged: musical performances from Andrea Bocelli and the duo of Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger, bland banter between hosts Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum, FIFA president Gianni Infantino presenting Donald Trump with an inaugural FIFA Peace Prize that would have seemed totally out of place if Infantino didn’t have a history of currying favor with the U.S. President. Trump, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum, and Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney took the stage to draw their countries, but that was purely ceremonial.  Infantino had called this upcoming World Cup “the greatest event that mankind had ever seen.”  So could we get to the actual draw already?  We did. Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Aaron Judge, and Wayne Gretzky–icons from the North American “Big 4” sports–did their duty revealing country names, and lo and behold, we have a World Cup. “Now,” said U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino afterward, “we start to live the World Cup.”  Yes, sir. Here are three very early takeaways.  1. American Opponents Pochettino has ramped up expectations for one of the host nations. While the U.S. hasn’t reached a World Cup quarterfinal since 2002—and didn’t even qualify for the tournament in Russia eight years ago—he’s thinking big. “For me, it’s about winning. I think if you don’t win, what does it matter? If you are second, nobody ever remembers,” Pochettino told famed soccer broadcaster Andrés Cantor in an interview published in November. “And I believe we should aspire to win it. Then you tell me you ‘reach a semifinal, you reach the quarterfinals, you have a great tournament, and due to different factors, well, you can’t win.’”On paper, it appears the United States received a favorable draw. On June 12, at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, the United States will face Paraguay in its World Cup opener. The U.S. recently defeated Paraguay, 2-1, in a November friendly that ended with a heated kerfuffle between the two teams. “We know them,” says Pochettino. “But they know us.”As a host nation, the U.S. automatically got slated with top-ranked teams like Spain and Brazil in “Pot 1,” and thus avoided these powers in the group-stage draw. When Shaq picked Australia, the lowest-ranked team in “Pot 2”–the second-tier World Cup teams in the FIFA rankings–out of the bowl, he seemed to do the Americans a favor. The U.S. faces Australia on June 19 in Seattle, which does cut the flight time for Socceroo faithful who may want to make the trip to the U.S.The U.S. also beat Australia, 2-1, in a recent friendly on October 14, outside Denver. Australia coach Tony Popovic told reporters at the Kennedy Center he has “a lot of young, good players coming through, players that I think will have big careers in years to come, and this is a chance for them to be on the world stage.” Americans, Popovic says, should expect to see “an exciting group, a confident group, and one that will give our all for our country … we’ve always punched well above our weight.”Team USA’s final group-stage game is on June 25, back in Southern California: the Americans will discover their opponent in March, as Türkiye, Romania, Slovakia, and Kosovo battle for the final slot in a playoff. 2. French Connection Group I has plenty of intrigue. France and Senegal, who play on June 16, have a complicated, intertwined history. France colonized the African nation, which gained independence in 1960; French is still the official language of Senegal. Meanwhile, a sizable Senegalese diaspora has settled in France. This summer, France formally ended its military presence in Senegal, and in August Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye visited French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris to reaffirm a commitment to strengthening ties between the two nations. Don’t expect much diplomacy, however, on the pitch.And how ‘bout France vs. Norway? The Norwegians, led by goal-scoring machine Erling Haaland, of Manchester City, rampaged through its qualifying group to make its first World Cup appearance since 1998. Haaland and French superstar Kylan Mbappé, who suits up for Real Madrid, are considered the heirs to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as the global faces of the game. They’ll go toe to toe on June 26. 3. England’s Bad Break In my notes, next to the teams that constitute Group L— England, Croatia, Ghana, and Panama—I scribbled a single word. “Brutal.”It’s bad enough that England, home to the most prestigious and valuable professional league in the world, hasn’t won a World Cup since 1966. Today, they found out they’ll face the top-ranked team in Pot 2—Croatia, the 2018 World Cup runner-up and third-place finisher in 2022; the second-ranked team in Pot 3, Panama; and the third-ranked team in Pot 4, Ghana, a World Cup quarterfinalist back in 2010 and a team that boasts young talent like Antoine Semenyo, who plays for Bournemouth in the Premier League and has reportedly caught the eye of the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool, and Tottenham Hotspur. The silver lining for the likes of England: with the expanded 48-team, 12-group World Cup format, not only do the top two teams in each group advance to the inaugural round-of-32 knockout stage. The top 8 third-place teams do too. So there’s more room for error next summer.  With more than six months to go before kickoff, the breakdowns are just beginning. And now that the draw is—mercifully—done, opening day, between Mexico and South Africa, June 11 in Mexico City, can’t come soon enough.