All the fuss about which country will win the World Cup is relevant to only a handful of the 48 participating teams. The rest are too small or weak to win, and have come to the tournament in pursuit of other quests. At every World Cup, there are several prestigious titles at stake beside that of Champion. In fact, it’s the profusion of storylines that makes this such a compelling show.
There’s the title of Clown — a big country that fails, often England, which strides onstage to the strains of “Rule, Britannia” and then trips up, usually on penalties against some former wartime enemy. There’s the Beautiful Loser — the prize for which my team, the Netherlands, used to compete.
Most teams aspire to the title of Cinderella, a small country that experiences a fairy tale: Cameroon in 1990, Ghana in 2010 and Morocco in 2022. The whole world supports the Cinderella. This year, with the tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams, there are more potential Cinderellas than ever before. In fact, the first round is all about them, given that big countries like England or Germany will need to perform miracles not to survive this stage.