How will the 2026 World Cup be remembered? Ranking...

As time passes, we forget most of what happened 16, 20, 24, 28 years ago. In a decade or two, will we still be thinking about Türkiye taking an absurd number of shots and still getting eliminated after two matches? What about Portugal's shocking opening draw with Congo DR? France's horrible first half against Senegal? Harry Kane's comeback brace in the round of 32? Do you even remember, today, the beautiful goal Vinícius Júnior scored for Brazil against Morocco just over a month ago? Eventually, every World Cup gets remembered for one specific thing. For 2022, it's obvious: that's the World Cup that Lionel Messi finally won. Four years prior, it's the World Cup when Kylian Mbappé became a superstar. When you think about 2014, there's one image that comes to mind: Germany's 7-1 desolation of Brazil. For 2010, it's a little trickier, but I think it's the Jabulani, the swerving, plummeting, physics-defying ball that Adidas didn't realize was too smooth for competition. In 2006, it's Zinedine Zidane's head-butt. What will it be for 2026? With a strange final, a chalky final four, an understated-yet-dominant champion without a defining superstar, and plenty of off- and on-field chaos, there isn't yet one image that forms in my mind when I think about everything we just sat through. Eventually, though, there will be something because there always is. So, in 20 years, what will we talk about when we talk about the 2026 World Cup? Let's run through the options, from least likely to most likely. 9. The moment soccer officially made it in America The 2026 World Cup shattered viewership and attendance numbers. That's partially because there were more games than ever before, but even without the extra matches, records still would have been set -- if not to the same degree. As an American, this is the first World Cup I can recall when the World Cup was the default conversation topic in this country. If I went to a restaurant or a coffee shop, I'd hear someone talking about the Scotland fans drinking Boston dry or the Norway fans rowing their historically inaccurate boat in the stands. The monoculture is supposed to be dead in the U.S., and it came back to life for a month because of ... a soccer tournament? But we've been waiting for our paradigm-shifting moment to come since 1994, and that's just not how these things work. There is never going to be a moment when soccer officially "makes it in America" outside of, I don't know, everyone deciding that American football is too violent and we should all stop playing or watching. The fact is that soccer has, already, gradually been making it in America, year after year. According to a recent survey in The Economist, about 10% of Americans claim that soccer is their favorite sport -- the third-highest percentage behind football and basketball but ahead of America's supposed pastime, baseball. If anything, this World Cup was proof that millions of people in America already loved this sport. 8. The World Cup where the U.S. president got a red card overturned Other World Cups, such as 1934 in Italy and 1978 in Argentina, are remembered for host countries whose authoritarian leaders used their political power to bend the results of the tournaments in their favor. Italy and Argentina won those World Cups. The U.S. men's national team, of course, did not win the 2026 World Cup, and didn't win a game after President Trump said that he asked FIFA to consider overturning Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension after the Bosnia match. FIFA did overturn the decision -- whether or not because of the call from Trump -- but the USMNT went out in embarrassing fashion in the round of 16, losing to a Belgium team that mocked the president after scoring its fourth goal of the match. Had the USMNT made a deep run to, say, the semifinals, or if Balogun had scored a hat trick against Belgium, then this might have ended up as the defining story of the tournament. Instead, it's just kind of sad, embarrassing and pathetic. 7. Cape Verde! Given the record sales and attendance, the expanded World Cup was clearly a commercial success. I'm not sure it wasn't a competitive success, either. At least, it wasn't a competitive failure. The third-place tiebreaker situation across the groups was silly and hard for anyone without a data science degree to follow, but the added number of matches meant that any bad games were quickly washed away by whatever game came next. Plus, a lot of the teams that wouldn't have qualified under the 32-team format were able to hold their own. None more than, of course, first-timers Cape Verde, the country of 550,000 people that you might not have heard of before this World Cup. Cape Verde played Spain to a draw and nearly forced Argentina to penalty kicks -- you know, the two teams that just played in the World Cup final. And in 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha, and Vozinha's mother, Cape Verde even had their own viral breakout stars. But while Cape Verde are one of the success stories of the 48-team World Cup, I think they'll ultimately be victims to it within our historical memory. There were too many other games -- and so, too many other things happened -- for them to be the defining image of the tournament. Had they beaten Argentina and then knocked off Egypt in the following round, perhaps? But they didn't last long enough in the event to dominate the storytelling. 6. The month the world turned on the VAR Everyone I know who watched the World Cup but who doesn't normally watch soccer hated the video assistant referee system. Everyone I know who watches soccer religiously also hates the VAR system. It pulls the legs out from under the rare moments of emotional release in every match -- the goals -- and it puts a microscope on various laws and rules that weren't designed to be implemented and adjudicated with millimeter levels of precision. More broadly, instant replay runs afoul of the most important guideline: Sports aren't worth anything if they're not fun, so don't change the rules if it makes your sport less fun. Although I wish this were the defining story of the 2026 World Cup, it won't be. Leagues and governing bodies have already spent so much money on the various technologies and processes. In fact, I bet most of them think the solution to the technological problems is to create new technologies to address the shortcomings of the current technologies. 5. Kylian Mbappé sets the all-time scoring record This seems like the kind of thing that is going to feel more important in the future than it did in the moment. Kylian Mbappé ended his World Cup with 22 career goals in the tournament. With Lionel Messi not scoring in the final, Mbappé secured his place as the new record holder, and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. I guess we shouldn't write off Messi scoring eight more goals when he's 43 in 2030, but the most likely outcome is that Messi doesn't play another minute at the World Cup. Among active players, Harry Kane is the closest to Mbappé, with 14 goals. But he's five years older than Mbappé. Jude Bellingham is four years younger than Mbappé, and he's currently running at the same level as Messi in World Cup goals per game (0.62), but he's a midfielder, and he's a full Harry Kane (14 goals) away from Mbappé. For someone to have a shot at ever catching Mbappé, they'd need to either "be Messi" or go off in their first tournament as a teenager. Maybe 19-year-old phenom Lamine Yamal might've had a chance at the latter, but he scored only once in this tournament. So, Mbappé officially became the greatest World Cup goal scorer of all time this summer. And he did it at just 27 years old with one of the most productive tournaments we've ever seen: 10 goals and four assists, the most combined goals+assists in the past 60 years. That's historic stuff! So, why doesn't it feel like that's what actually happened? Well, Mbappé didn't do much as France were eliminated by Spain in the semifinals, and then he surpassed Messi in an uncompetitive, defense-is-optional third-place game against England. That Mbappé set the record this summer will go down as a piece of important trivia rather than a defining story. 4. The moment Erling Haaland became a global star I don't have the numbers to back this up, but my fiancée was recently served an Instagram post that used AI to make it look like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Erling Haaland were leaving a club together in Los Angeles in 2004. I think Haaland was put into the picture in place of Lindsay Lohan. Why am I still talking about this? The fact that I just wrote those words -- and that those images exist -- suggests that Haaland has officially crossed over to the American mainstream. I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money on Haaland being the person whose name is now known by the most people who had no idea who he was before the tournament started. He looks like what a lot of people assume an actual Viking would've looked like, he's incredibly charismatic, he spent the summer exploring the streets of America rather than locking himself inside of a hyperbaric chamber, and he's the kind of athlete we love in this country: big, fast, scores lots of goals, has a greatness that is completely uncomplicated. There's nothing subtle about Erling Haaland. But I do think this is a slightly more American story than a World Cup story. Haaland added 30 million Instagram followers over the course of the tournament, and he knocked out Brazil, but his impact on the event ended in the round of 16. 3. Lionel Messi's last dance If you don't follow soccer outside of the World Cup, then you saw what you expected to see: The guy who was the best player at the 2022 World Cup was, again, the best player at the 2026 World Cup. If you do follow soccer outside of the World Cup, then I guess you saw what you've always seen, too: Lionel Messi, being the best soccer player on the planet. But, well, we hadn't really seen Messi play at this level since 2022 -- and then he just did it all again at 39 years old. Even without having much of an impact on the final, Messi was still easily the standout player at this tournament for all the reasons I outlined when I, once again, argued for him as the greatest male athlete we've ever seen: he was the best scorer, creator, dribbler and passer -- all at the same time. This will be the lasting memory for me, personally: one final surprising month of unmatched excellence from the person who is better at the sport I write about for a living than anyone else who has ever lived. It's strange and thrilling to be shocked by something you've already seen happen over and over again for almost 20 straight years. But Argentina's lackluster showing in the final, combined with the 2022 World Cup already being the Messi World Cup, makes it unlikely that we will remember 2026 as the Messi World Cup, too. 2. Spain are the best defense we've ever seen -- and maybe the best team, full stop Spain played 210 minutes against Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi -- the two greatest goal scorers in World Cup history and the two goal-scoring leaders at this tournament. Across those 210 minutes, Messi (1) and Mbappé (3) combined for four total shots worth about 0.1 expected goals. Neither player created a shot for a teammate, either. Messi completed two passes into the box; Mbappé zero. And it's not like Spain shut down the two superstars and let somebody else beat them. Against France and Argentina, Spain allowed 12 total shots worth a combined 0.53 expected goals (xG). Over the course of the tournament -- eight games plus 30 minutes of extra time -- Luis De La Fuente's team conceded 47 total shots worth 2.36 xG: That's about 0.3 xG per match from 5.8 shots per match. The per-game averages across the 2026 World Cup were 1.5 xG and 12.5 shots. Spain allowed just one shot worth at least 0.2 xG over the entire tournament: the last attempt by Argentina, the one Giuliano Simeone skied over the bar. Every other team in the competition allowed at least three chances worth 0.2 or better -- and that's despite Spain playing eight full games plus extra time. The numbers get even more ridiculous when you look across the history of the tournament. Stats Perform has advanced World Cup data going all the way back to the 1966 tournament. Since then, Spain allowed the third-fewest xG of any team. The only sides to allow fewer were Brazil in 2022 and Uruguay in 1990; the former played five matches, the latter lasted for only four. But advanced stats aren't even necessary here. Spain just played the most games of any World Cup champion: eight. And Spain just allowed the fewest goals of any World Cup champion: one. The defense stands out, too, for how it defended. Unlike Italy in 2006 or other teams we think of as great defenses, this was a proactive great defense -- a combination that usually doesn't exist at the international level, where teams don't have the practice time to produce a cohesive high press that doesn't get ripped apart. Spain controlled 72.2% of the final-third possession at the tournament -- by far the highest mark of any team that reached the quarterfinals. And they allowed 8.81 passes per defensive action (PPDA) -- again, by far the best mark of any team that reached the quarterfinals. They defended so well by rarely defending near their own goal And really, it all adds up to maybe the most dominant national team we've ever seen. Spain are currently on a 38-game unbeaten run -- the longest in the history of international soccer, in an era when international soccer is more competitive than ever before. They beat -- and really, dominated -- each of the previous two champions en route to lifting the trophy. They finished the tournament with the highest-ever Elo rating for a World Cup champion. And yet ... 1. The Americanization of soccer officially begins Spain are the exact kind of team that ends up not defining a tournament. Luis De La Fuente is a genuinely fantastic coach. Spain are not so much more talented than England or France that they should be this much obviously better than England or France -- and yet they are. The coach deserves plenty of credit for that, but the divide between the club and national games also means that no big clubs are going to be trying to hire De La Fuente away. His most likely path, instead, is to become Spain's version of Didier Deschamps -- a coach who managed a fantastic era of international play but not a coach who changed the way we thought about the sport. The biggest compliment you can give Spain is that they truly are a team, a side that's not at all reliant on the extraordinary skills of one specific player. No matter who is playing, the way they play doesn't really change. If you told me that Lamine Yamal was going to score one goal and end the tournament with zero assists, then I would've said congrats to Spain on another meek round-of-16 exit. Instead, Yamal was quiet -- and Spain were easily the best team in the tournament. The scary thing for everyone else is that Yamal will be dominant in the future, and the rest of the Spain team will continue to be this good. I think a dominant Spain with a breakout performance from the teenage Yamal would have made Spain a defining side in the popular imagination. But that didn't happen, and although Golden Ball winner Rodri is a superstar -- and he already had the Ballon d'Or to prove it -- he plays the game and carries himself in such an understated way that he almost avoids definitional status. Perhaps Yamal will win the 2026 Ballon d'Or because Spain won the World Cup, and this tournament will retroactively get remembered for that. Or maybe 19-year-old Pau Cubarsí does go on to become one of the greatest center backs of all time, and that gets paired with Spain's impenetrable defense in a simple narrative that easily contextualizes the 2026 tournament. But instead, my guess is that we end up looking back on 2026 as the year the floodgates opened for the powers that be to change the way soccer works so it's easier to commercialize as a product. In other words: so there are more in-game breaks to sell ads against. Arsene Wenger, FIFA's head of global football development, has said that FIFA will review the concept of the newly implemented hydration breaks halfway through each half since "sometimes people didn't like" them. But Fox just made $250 million from selling ads during the breaks. I would love to be wrong, but when was the last time a sports business -- especially one driven by FIFA, of all organizations -- turned down that kind of money? "It would be hard to move backwards once hydration breaks have been shown to work because of the dollars associated with it," David Levy, former head of Turner, told ESPN last week. "And if it's not hydration breaks, it will be something else." For all the pretournament worries, the 2026 World Cup was a genuine success. And I don't mean that in terms of ticket sales, sponsor satisfaction, ad sales or Nielsen numbers. No, I mean that in the purest of ways, in the best of what the World Cup is supposed to represent: the greatest athletes captivating the world and uniting people who would otherwise never speak, all in an effort to control and chase after a bouncing ball. People across the world feel alienated for all kinds of reasons right now; life is precarious everywhere you go. But the World Cup genuinely did bring people together for the past month in a way that's undeniable and incredibly rare. People in Kansas were screaming "Rock Chalk Algeria." I heard a guy with a beard and ponytail down to his waist, at a restaurant in rural upstate New York, talking about Kylian Mbappé and France. Argentineans applauded Cape Verdeans. Brazilians and Scots partied together. There was someone wearing a half-Argentina-half-Auburn University (?) shirt. Lamine Yamal shopped at Walmart. Despite the various authorities doing everything in their power to extinguish it, the spirit of the World Cup persisted. That's the blessing and the curse of this tournament -- and it's why my guess is that we'll remember the 2026 World Cup as the one where FIFA realized it could change the rules of the game so it allowed them to make even more money. After all, no matter how corrupt FIFA is, soccer's governing body can't take away the bounce of the ball. So, no matter what FIFA does, we're all still going to watch.