Opinion
Whenever there’s a FIFA World Cup, we have a bandwagon and the bandwagon has a caboose.
The bandwagon is our Aussie team, the Socceroos or Matildas, and toot-toot, all aboard.
This is irritating for the all-year-every-year diehard fan, who finds their niche interest, the Australian football team that they’re normally able to follow with the luxury of legroom and spare seats to either side, is now as jam-packed as the Homebush train on game night.
It is what it is. Among the “Australian values” on our citizenship test is that 25-plus million of us become Socceroos tragics for a couple of weeks every fourth year, and then magically transform back to normal indifference as the bandwagon empties.
The caboose is more interesting. Who’s your second team? Who did you draw in the office sweep? Put another way, who are you cheering for to actually win the World Cup?
In constructing an idiot’s guide for dummies and a bluffer’s guide for fools, there are pluses and minuses wherever you look. This is the world we live in.
France
As in the past two World Cups, Les Bleus are the team with the panache, esprit, savoir faire, joie de vivre and je ne sais quoi.
Their captain, Kylian Mbappe, while frustratingly inconsistent at club level, ascends to an astral plane at World Cups.
This year’s team is so representative of today’s multicultural France, it only has one player with French ancestry, so if it wins, it’s a direct challenge to all those incredibly big-IQ American leaders who say that immigration is sending Europe to hell, and is also a nightmare for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally which doesn’t know which France it is cheering for.
On the downside, the French also play with an insufferable amour-propre and hauteur. We know they’re good. They know they’re good. Do they need another World Cup to prove it?
Argentina
Lionel Messi, like a good high-altitude Malbec, gets more adorable with age.
The triumphant 2022 World Cup was meant to be his swansong, but here he is again, as cuddly as a labubu with a three-day growth.
The Messi years are such a contrast to the high-octane (or just high) Maradona years, and their cynical aftermath. Who would have thought the world could develop a soft spot for the Albiceleste?
The caveat is that if Messi can stop the clock forever, he’ll only encourage other old men to stick around into the 2030s.
England
Well. England. What can you say? Good team on paper, again.
Harry Kane, again, but playing brilliantly since his switch to Bayern. Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze. So much Arsenal goodness. Having gone to America of all places, in 2026 of all times, maybe football really does need to come home. Caveats? Well, England.
Spain
So bewitching were the tiki-taka men’s world champions of 2010 and the women’s team of 2023, a spirit of invincibility inhabits that red shirt even when they’re not successful.
This Spanish team won the last European Championships, defeating England in the final, when Lamine Yamal was only 17.
Who can’t love Spain? They’re this generation’s Brazil. The only query is the curse of Real Madrid: when no Real players are in the Spanish team, they’ve never won anything. This year, they are 100 per cent non-Real.
Portugal
Pretty easy equation. You’re either on team Cristiano Ronaldo or you’re not.
Unlike the low-key Messi, age seems to have turned Ronaldo into Jeff Bezos’s wife’s twin brother, and not in a good way. Does he deserve a World Cup to crown his career? He thinks so, and maybe that’s all that matters.
Morocco
At the last World Cup, Morocco made the semi-finals. They are co-hosting the next one. They won the African Cup of Nations, albeit in an appeals court, not on the pitch.
If Spain has become Brazil, Morocco has become Argentina. They’ll be tough to beat because they know no limits. They’ll struggle to win it all because they know no limits. Still, it would be a great thing to see an African team win a World Cup at last. Preferably, it would be Senegal.
Brazil
Poor old Brazil, that pale yellow faded beauty. Neymar is back, at the end of a career that has always seemed about to peak.
They will have a solid defence led by the impassable Gabriel Magalhaes of Arsenal; just shut your eyes if he has to take penalty kicks.
The heart always wants Brazil to be a little bit better than they are. Nostalgia’s a killer. When they’re playing in today’s style and you’re drifting off like a US President at a Knicks game, go to YouTube and look up Pele, Falcao, Zico, Socrates, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos …
USA
You cannot be serious. Please let them not get out of their group, after falling to a calamitous mix-up and an injury-time winner to Australia.
Mexico
Let them win, and then annex their northern neighbour as their newest state.
Canada
If Mexico can’t win, then let Canada and then annex their southern neighbour as their newest state.
Norway
Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard can’t do it all, but they bring many vowels. Haaland also rates as one of the best blokes in a league, the English Premier League, that is a production line for villains and geese. One Scandi team is usually among the sneaky caboose favourites, and this can be the Norwegian moment.
Turkey and Paraguay
These are serious football countries with passionate fans and credible teams. They will have banked their games with Australia as wins. That’s fine. Let them be confident. Too confident.
Scotland
Please, just one win so that we can see the celebrations. You’ll be wishing you cornered the market in tartan tam ‘o’ shanters with the fake red hair.
Germany
Oh, did we forget? It’s unclear whether Germany is a sleeping giant of world football or has just gone to sleep. Times past, there was such a pragmatic efficiency to German football that even their ordinary teams won World Cups. Now their ordinary teams are simply ordinary.
Netherlands
So often the bridesmaid, this year the Dutch will be lucky to even get a flower girl’s role. As Winston Churchill said of Clement Attlee, “He is a modest man with much to be modest about.”
Compared with their forebears, the Oraanje of 2026 have much to be modest about.
I’m sure I’ve missed the expert’s surprise package of the World Cup – Ecuador? Belgium? Croatia? Japan? Iran? – but that’s the thing about caboose jumpers, they only have a tourist’s insight.
But what’s wrong with tourists? If they can divert attention from the ticket prices, the immigration atrocities, the White House circus, the corruption, the weird AI cyborg of sycophancy and autocracy that is Gianni Infantino – if the World Cup can distract the world from itself – then it will be worth the price of admission. Which is easier to say when you’re watching it for free on SBS than if you are, shorn of one arm and one leg, in one of the seats.
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
