Ryan O’HanlonNov 19, 2025, 07:17 AM ETCloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on X
play1:24Burley amazed by Ireland’s World Cup qualifying heroicsCraig Burley reacts to Ireland’s incredible win over Hungary, as Troy Parrott’s hat trick books them a World Cup playoff spot.
play1:30Burley’s message to the World Cup bound Scotland squadCraig Burley gives some advice to Scotland’s squad, as the last player to score for Scotland at a World Cup in 1998.
play1:04Hislop: Florian Wirtz back to his best in big Germany winShaka Hislop says Florian Wirtz was almost unplayable as Germany booked their World Cup place with a 6-0 win over Slovakia.
ESPN FC crew not having England as second favourites to win World Cup (1:33)Frank Leboeuf and Craig Burley question England’s place as second favourites in the bookmakers’ odds to win the 2026 World Cup. (1:33)
Burley amazed by Ireland’s World Cup qualifying heroicsCraig Burley reacts to Ireland’s incredible win over Hungary, as Troy Parrott’s hat trick books them a World Cup playoff spot.
Craig Burley reacts to Ireland’s incredible win over Hungary, as Troy Parrott’s hat trick books them a World Cup playoff spot.
Burley’s message to the World Cup bound Scotland squadCraig Burley gives some advice to Scotland’s squad, as the last player to score for Scotland at a World Cup in 1998.
Craig Burley gives some advice to Scotland’s squad, as the last player to score for Scotland at a World Cup in 1998.
Hislop: Florian Wirtz back to his best in big Germany winShaka Hislop says Florian Wirtz was almost unplayable as Germany booked their World Cup place with a 6-0 win over Slovakia.
Shaka Hislop says Florian Wirtz was almost unplayable as Germany booked their World Cup place with a 6-0 win over Slovakia.
In addition to the three hosts, 39 other teams have officially qualified for next summer’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. That leaves 22 teams to fight for the remaining six places: 16 UEFA sides for the four final spots from Europe, then two teams from CONCACAF, and one each from Asia, Oceania, Africa, and South America for the two spots from an intercontinental playoff.
When World Cup qualifying started in September 2023, there were 209 teams who, theoretically, could have won the World Cup. Today, only 64 teams who, theoretically, could win the World Cup remain.
No, I didn’t accidentally end that sentence too early. Transfermarkt has an estimated transfer value for Tenzin Dorji, a 28-year-old center back for Thimphu City FC, the second-place team in the Bhutan Premier League, but they still didn’t think any of the New Caledonians were worth their time.
Among the 42 qualified teams, Qatar have the lowest market value and the lowest Elo rating. They also were outscored by six goals in their final 12 qualification matches. But thanks to their FIFA ranking, they might not even be in the lowest-seeded pot for December’s draw.
They rank just ahead of Qatar in the Elo ratings despite a combined market value that’s more than 15 times the size of Qatar’s. Amazingly, Ghana qualified for the 2025 World Cup, but managed to fail to qualify for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations. Priorities, people.
Led by Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo and Tottenham’s Mohammed Kudus, they should be able to field close to an entire starting 11 of players who play in one of Europe’s Big Five leagues. Maybe that’s why they’ve struggled so much recently? All of their players have to hop on long flights to get to games, while most of their African opponents don’t have that problem. They better hope so, at least.
As of now, among all qualified nations, there’s no bigger gap between talent and performance than with the Black Stars over the past couple of years.
I, too, did not expect to find Uzbekistan this high in the rankings. But they’ve played regional power Iran six times over the past two years, and they drew five of those matches and won one. In fact, their only loss over the last 365 days was a 2-1 friendly against Uruguay last month. Their only other loss over the last 730 days was a 3-2 defeat to Qatar, who they later beat 3-0. Sure, Asia isn’t the most competitive confederation, but they’ve lost only two games in two years.
I’m not sure they’re particularly good at this kind of soccer, either. They finished up qualifying with a negative expected goal differential, and they gave up more shots per game than any of the other European teams on this list.
If they do qualify, though, they’re going to be a huge pain to play against. It’s one thing when a team tries to mask a lack of defensive talent by playing a defensive style, but Ireland do actually have a bit of defensive talent: Brentford’s Caoimhín Kelleher in goal, his teammate Nathan Collins at center back, and then Everton’s Jake O’Brien and Ipswich’s Dara O’Shea round out the core of the back five.
Unless Roma’s Evan Ferguson suddenly does become the prince who was promised over the next few months, they’re just not going to have enough attacking firepower to do much more than grind every match into dust.
Burley amazed by Ireland’s World Cup qualifying heroics
Burley’s message to the World Cup bound Scotland squad
Ivan Perisic and Luka Modric are still starting for this team! They’re a combined 76 years old! They were already past their primes when Croatia made the World Cup final in 2018!
OK, I’ll stop yelling. Even with the emergence of Josko Gvardiol as a star with Manchester City, the Croatians haven’t really been able to develop a generation beyond Modric & Co. At least in the case of Modric, though, why would you? He’s 40, and he … might be the best player in Serie A?
Though Modric can no longer start for the absolute best club teams in the world, international soccer is a much less competitive and much less physically demanding environment. He’ll almost be 41 next summer, and I still expect him to be one of the best midfielders in the competition.
Or, say, Sweden, where Arsenal’s Viktor Gyökeres and Liverpool’s Alexander Isak still haven’t figured out how to play together.
Sometimes, though, national teams just do consistently play at a higher level than their talent suggests they should — and, well, most of those teams are in South America. Currently, Ecuador, Colombia, and Argentina all have Elo ratings significantly better than their market-value ratings.
But even with all of those caveats, I still think that South American sides almost all get more out of their collective talent than most of the big European nations. Of the seven CONMEBOL teams on this list, six have a significantly better Elo rating than market-value rating. The only exception? Brazil, who have the fourth-most valuable squad, but currently sit seventh in the Elo ratings.
At major tournaments, everybody’s favorite dark horse almost always disappoints. I think that’s because most dark horses that develop a consensus around them are the ones that have a couple of famous players who are still good, a couple of other not-as-famous players who aren’t good anymore, and then a remaining roster of scrubs who everyone ignores. Soccer is closer to a weak-link sport than a strong-link game — otherwise Norway wouldn’t have missed the past two major tournaments.
Everyone is going to be on the Norway bandwagon this summer and as with most bandwagons, I would encourage you to avoid hopping on. By definition, when you become a bandwagon favorite, your actual chance of success greatly exceeds your actual chance of success.
Then again, I’m not even sure Norway can be considered a dark horse anymore. They’re up to 11th in Elo, and they won every game they played in qualifying. Obviously schedules weren’t equal across each group, but the Norwegians finished qualifying with the best adjusted goal differential (70% goals, 30% xG) of any team, at plus-3.0. For context, that’s more than double what first-place Arsenal are doing in the Premier League right now.
What makes me less skeptical of this, too, is how simple the formula is: Erling Haaland led UEFA qualifying with 16 goals — no one else even had double digits — while Martin Odegaard led everyone with seven assists. They might be even better than we saw in qualifying too, as Odegaard appeared in only five of the eight matches. On top of all that, the roster around the two stars has greatly improved.
Hislop: Florian Wirtz back to his best in big Germany win
It’s amazing how quickly this has gone south. There was talk of how Italy were revolutionizing modern soccer with their victory over England in the 2020 Euro final, and they followed that up by missing the 2022 World Cup and stinking up the joint at last summer’s Euros. Now, they have to win two games in March to avoid missing their second straight World Cup.
So, they have a ton of top-level talent, but they just don’t have anything close to an attacking superstar. Even still, they should be better than what they are right now: 18th in the Elo ratings.
Soccer really is an amazing game. Nearly four years ago, a 37-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo was benched at the World Cup for poor play. Portugal, then, immediately won the next game 6-1 and his replacement, Gonçalo Ramos, scored a hat trick to knock a then-high-flying Switzerland side out of the tournament.
Fast-forward to today: Ronaldo is 41 years old, and no one has learned any lessons. As long as Ronaldo isn’t suspended because of the red card he picked up in last week’s loss to Ireland, he’ll be starting for Portugal in the opening game of the World Cup.
This is a team that, presumably, will have Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Trent Alexander-Arnold on the roster next summer. This is also a team that gave up zero — zero! — goals across eight qualifying matches. They gave up fewer than five shots per game and they held their opponents to the lowest shot quality (0.05 xG/shot) of any team in UEFA qualification.
Granted, no one in their group ranked higher than 30th in the Elo ratings (Serbia), but if Thomas Tuchel can get this dominant-for-a-half-decade defense also chopping up sitting-deep defenses next summer, then no one else stands a chance.