As the World Cup 2026 draw draw and its group stage venues and times were announced over two days and two long announcement shows, there was a lot to take in.
From the Americans’ chances, to who’ll play games in Massachusetts, to the start times, to the contrived television events reated to announced the field for a world-wide audience, this was sneak peek at what’s coming seven months from now.
Below are 11 thoughts on what was revealed over the last two days.
∗ Fans in Massachusetts will have a chance to see a handful of the best and most famous players in the world at Gillette Stadium.
France’s Kylian Mbappe is a bucket list sort of athlete in the prime of his career. He’s only 26 but has 12 career World Cup goals and needs just four to become the all-time leader in World Cup goals.
Erling Haaland is a 6-foot-5 scoring force up front for Norway and one of the best players in the world. The 25-year-old’s 16 goals in qualifying were the most by anyone.
England’s Harry Kane is on the back end of a great career at 32, but remains an elite player on a side that figures to have a lot of support locally.
If somebody had told local fans before the draw was announced that Mbappe, Haaland and Kane would all play World Cup games in Foxborough, they’d likely have been thrilled and probably still are.
But there’s a glass-half-empty side to this, too.
After Friday’s draw, there were some tantalizing matchups in the three groups that were playing games at Gillette.
With two group stage games in both Group C and I and one from Group K all being held in Foxborough, there were three marquee games and six teams in FIFA’s top 20 who could have played games in Massachusetts.
Brazil vs. Morocco? France vs. Senegal? England vs. Croatia?
Any one of them would have been incredible to see. But all of those were elsewhere.
Brazil vs. Morocco and France vs. Senegal, the best games in Group C and Group I, respectively are both at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. England vs. Croatia, the Group K headliner, is in Dallas.
Brazil won’t play in Massachusetts at all. Brazil is the top seed in Group C and two of the six games for Group C will be at Gillette. So, there was understandable hope, if not expectation, that Brazil would be New England-bound.
Croatia and Senegal aren’t coming either.
∗ The good news is that Gillette is also hosting a Round of 32 knockout stage game and a quarterfinal. Those each figure to feature elite teams and superstar players.
∗ It’ll be interesting to see how the 48-team field is received. The top two sides from each of the 12 four-team pods will advance and the third-place team from eight of the 12 will also move on.
For any halfway decent team, the group stage will not be about advancing, but not being eliminated. That’s a subtle but not insignificant difference.
If the Americans don’t win advance it will be a huge failure. If they don’t win their group, it’ll be disappointing.
∗ U.S. fans in Eastern and Central time can’t be excited about the Americans’ start times. They play their three group stage games at 9 p.m. (on a Saturday) 3 p.m. (on a Friday) and 10 p.m. (on a Thursday).
If the hope is to have hosting the World Cup give soccer another bump in popularity in the United States, those are three lousy time slots for television.
∗ Turkey looms as a sneaky concerning opponent in USA’s Group C. They still have to play their way into the field through one of the Euro qualifying playoffs, but could be a scary team if they get there. They beat a shorthanded American team 2-1 in June.
∗ The draw reveal show was, at best, unintentionally funny and, at worst, hard to watch.
It was a weird mixture of the Oscars, the ESPYs and an overly stretched-out Selection Sunday show.
The result was lots of fanfare and all the spontaneity of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade coverage. With all the famous faces, weak jokes, mispronunciations and awkward exchanges, it should have been shorter. It could have been better.
Most of the teams in the field don’t play or watch American football, baseball or ice hockey, which limited the international appeal of Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky and Aaron Judge.
And it’s hard to imagine anyone not interested in soccer tuned in just to see Shaq or Heidi Klum and people who are interested were already tuning in.
Gretzky appeared unprepared for the countries he knew he’d be announcing. His pronunciation of Curaçao (Ka-rack-o) was the worst, but not the Great One’s only gaffe.
∗ If FIFA is going to have a Peace Prize, it should be retroactively awarded to Didier Drogba, whose helped convince combatants to agree to a cease fire in the civil war in the Cote d’Ivoire in 2005.
∗ The Peace Prize trophy itself was notably larger than the World Cup itself.
∗ If baseball is going to have a work stoppage, (which is expected in 2027), it’s too bad that it didn’t coincide with the World Cup.
∗ There are a lot of good games at 3 p.m. EST so they can air in European Prime Time. That makes sense, but it’s going to be hot in some United States and Mexican cities in late afternoon in June.
∗ New Englanders are going to love Scotland fans. The Tartan Army is unflinchingly passionate about its team despite the fact that the Scots haven’t made the World Cup since 1998. There’s a bar somewhere in the city that doesn’t even know how lucky it is yet. The Scots will make it their home base and turn all the locals into Scotland fans.
