Sports
Mike Macdonald lets the Ravens defense do his talking
If Mike Macdonald’s ascent to one of the NFL’s hottest coordinators and a legitimate head-coaching candidate feels meteoric, that’s probably because he has never embraced the art of self-promotion.
The 36-year-old second-year Baltimore Ravens defensive boss has consented to side media interviews in recent weeks largely because he wants to tout the chemistry and cohesion of his staff, not because he wants any more attention. He likes to call himself a “steward” of head coach John Harbaugh’s vision and will point you in the direction of two dozen others who deserve praise for the Ravens’ success.
But it’s impossible to ignore Macdonald’s impact on the AFC’s top seed, which faces the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s conference championship game at M&T Bank Stadium.
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Baltimore became the first defense in NFL history to lead the league in points allowed, sacks and turnovers. The Ravens followed up a landmark regular season by smothering likely Offensive Rookie of the Year C.J. Stroud and the Texans on Saturday, keeping Houston’s offense out of the end zone — its only touchdown came on a punt return — in a 34-10 divisional-round victory.
After the game, Harbaugh called his defensive coordinator into the middle of the locker room for a game ball.
Macdonald pushed inside linebacker Roquan Smith forward.
The thing is, Macdonald has never been afraid to put himself out there. Especially when it comes to football.
He was born in Boston but moved to Atlanta when he was about 7 years old. His father, Hugh, had discouraged him from playing the game. Hugh played on the non-varsity team at Army-West Point and worried about the injury risks. But Hugh returned home late from a business trip one night to find a helmet and shoulder pads on Mike’s twin bed.
“The next morning, I asked him, ‘What’s this?’ He had decided to join the junior team,” Hugh said. “So off he went.”
Mike was neither the biggest nor fastest guy on the teams he played for, but there was no questioning his drive. Hugh filmed his youth games and the two would watch them together and break down plays. Mike became consumed with the game’s nuances.
As a running back and linebacker, Macdonald’s physical attributes wouldn’t set him apart, but studying opponents’ tendencies gave him a head start. When he got to Centennial High School, Macdonald would break down film of opponents and present his findings to his coach, Xarvia Smith.
“When he first met me, he tried to tell me that we needed to go out to lunch and hang out together,” Smith recalled. “I was like, ‘Mike, you are a player. You are my player. I’m not hanging out with you.’
“He just always showed leadership. He always was prepared to show how good he was.”
As a junior, Macdonald started getting stingers in his neck. His doctor advised him that he was at long-term risk if he continued to play through his senior year, but Macdonald wanted to go out on his terms. After the swelling around the nerves in his neck subsided, the doctor greenlighted him to play in the final game of the season. But on the last play of the last practice of game week, Macdonald heard a pop in his knee. He tore his ACL. There would be no one final game.
There would, however, be one last high school hurrah. About four months after surgery, Macdonald was sitting on the bench for the Centennial High baseball team. Macdonald’s coach was initially too concerned for his safety to play him. Macdonald begged him to reconsider. In the team’s second game, the score was tied in the last inning and Macdonald got the go-ahead to hit.
“He took two pitches and put the next pitch over the fence,” Hugh said. “He looked like Kirk Gibson going around the bases, he had this big brace on his knee. It was quite a moment.”
Macdonald was a student at the University of Georgia when he called Smith looking for a favor. Smith had recently gotten the head job at Cedar Shoals High in Athens, and Macdonald wanted to know if he had an opening.
“Mike is probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life,” Smith said. “I realized if he just learned how to work, he would be great at this.”
Macdonald started running the defense for Cedar Shoals’ ninth-grade team. They had six shutouts that year.
“An awesome experience,” Macdonald said. “I went into the situation as a strategist. I liked identifying tendencies and anticipating plays. What I learned is you can take a person from A to B. When you do that, if he did something today that he couldn’t do yesterday, that was incredibly rewarding. That’s when I was hooked.”
For two years, Macdonald dropped by the Georgia football offices on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, spending hours talking with video coordinator Joe Tereshinski and hoping somebody would appreciate his persistence. Macdonald was putting the finishing touches on a degree in finance — he graduated summa cum laude — when he ran into new defensive coordinator Todd Grantham at a Starbucks and took one final opportunity to state his case. Impressed, Grantham invited him in for a formal meeting, then told Macdonald there was a volunteer coaching spot available as long as he got into grad school.
“I took out a loan and went to work,” Macdonald said.
Macdonald worked at Georgia for four seasons, the first as a volunteer assistant and the next three as a grad assistant. He broke down film, worked on game plans and helped run the scout team in the ultimate football education.
“When you have guys that are really sharp and can communicate well and are hard workers and put their nose down and get to work, you can see where a guy is going to have a chance to move up in the world,” said Mark Richt, Georgia’s football coach at the time. “You want confident people and you want guys who you believe are trustworthy. I think there is a real comfort level with Mike and the type of person he is. He checked all of the boxes.”
Then he almost walked away from the profession altogether. At 26, Macdonald became “disillusioned” by the job. His time as a grad assistant expired in 2013. Some of the politics had gotten to him, and some of his relationships had become draining.
“The whole glamor of being a football coach was wearing off,” Macdonald said. “I didn’t really believe in the process and the people that I was around. I didn’t see the benefit of what I had fallen in love with before.”
There were opportunities for him. Macdonald had a finance degree and a master’s in sports management. Hugh had always encouraged Macdonald and his two sisters to have a plan and then make sure every decision was geared toward that plan. Hugh wasn’t against a career in coaching, but the business world can be awfully lucrative for somebody with Mike’s intelligence and savvy, and Hugh wanted to make sure football was the best place for his son’s talents.
“I figured I was going to go see the world and start working,” Macdonald said. “It didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do when it was happening, but I just felt kind of forced to do it. I didn’t want to take a job at Wherever State and go across the country recruiting Johnny. It wasn’t on the trajectory that I wanted it to be on.”
He accepted a $60,000 job in Atlanta working at KPMG, one of the country’s “Big 4” accounting firms. He had already signed a contract when he got a call from the Ravens. The previous year, he had applied for a scouting internship with Baltimore. That wasn’t a great fit, but Harbaugh was starting a coaching internship program in 2014.
Macdonald informed KPMG that he would no longer be joining the firm.
Harbaugh has each of his assistants present a different aspect of the week’s game plan to the team. It’s good exposure and experience for young coaches and creates a sense of accountability for everyone on staff.
As a twenty-something whose playing career ended in high school, Macdonald felt some initial apprehension about stepping in front of a room of NFL veterans.
“I just remember thinking, Terrell Suggs is back there,” Macdonald said. “Why in the world would he listen to anything I’m saying?”
But those game week sessions in front of the likes of Suggs, a former defensive player of the year, helped Macdonald find his voice. If he believed in the process, he didn’t need to worry about presenting himself in a certain way.
“I think you come to the realization of, ‘OK, I’ve put a lot of work into this thing and I think I have something (Suggs) can benefit from,’” Macdonald said. “If I’m trying to be some guy that I feel like he’d resonate with, that’s not going to work. It’s hard to be that person all of the time. Just be yourself.”
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That first year in Baltimore, Macdonald shared an office with fellow Ravens interns Chris Horton and Eugene Shen. They broke down plays, worked on projects and helped out the coaching staff. A decade later, Horton leads the Ravens’ special teams and Shen is the senior vice president of football strategy for the Washington Commanders.
“We talk about it all the time, where we’ve come from to where we are now,” Horton said. “It’s been an amazing process of putting your head down, going to work and those things will pay off for you.”
In his lone season at Michigan, Mike Macdonald led a top-10 defense on a team that earned a College Football Playoff appearance. (Robin Alam / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In 2018, Harbaugh interviewed Macdonald, then a 30-year-old linebackers coach, for the defensive coordinator job after Dean Pees retired. Harbaugh ultimately hired Wink Martindale, but the opportunity to interview ultimately strengthened Macdonald’s conviction.
“It was a great experience to go through and say, OK, if I were to do it, what would it look like? What are your ideas?” Macdonald said. “It makes you organize your thoughts.”
He continued to prepare himself for an opportunity. He and fellow assistant Jesse Minter watched film together and practiced calling the game, constantly reviewing different offensive schemes and discussing the defensive response.
“You could tell right away how sharp this dude was,” said Minter, now the defensive coordinator at Michigan. “Some people do the job that they have and do a good job, and other people do the job that they have and do a good job while at the same time always preparing for the next job mentally.”
When Michigan had a defensive coordinator opening after the 2020 season, Harbaugh pitched Macdonald to his brother, Jim, thinking Macdonald was then ready to be in that role. He was proven correct. In Macdonald’s one season in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines had a top-10 defense, turned the tables on Ohio State, played in the College Football Playoff and produced three top-45 defensive draft picks.
When the Ravens and Martindale parted ways in January 2022, Harbaugh brought back Macdonald, believing the time was right. Minter replaced him with the Wolverines.
Things didn’t get off to an auspicious start. When the Ravens blew a three-touchdown lead to the Miami Dolphins in Week 2 that season, ESPN analyst Rex Ryan, a former Baltimore defensive coordinator, said the “new hot-shot coordinator is terrible.” But by season’s end — and after a trade that brought Roquan Smith over from Chicago in the middle of Smith’s second consecutive All-Pro campaign — the Ravens defense was playing at a high level, finishing eighth in the league in defensive DVOA.
They’ve been significantly better this season, shutting down some of the game’s top offenses. Smith calls Macdonald a “wizard” for his ability to identify weaknesses and exploit them.
“If there’s something we’re not comfortable with, he’ll throw it out. If there’s something we’re not comfortable with but we want to work on, he’ll try to simplify it and make it to where it does work for us,” said inside linebacker Patrick Queen. “He’s very thorough in everything he does.”
This isn’t the constantly blitzing, physically pulverizing Ravens defense of yesteryear. This group’s aggression is more controlled and calculated, relying heavily on deception and each player embracing his role on a given play. It is versatile, multiple and creative, a beautiful harmony of scheme and personnel being studied and admired at both the college and professional levels.
Macdonald believes strongly in the players being accountable to one another. He has his 355-pound nose tackle drop into passing lanes and his 190-pound cornerback blitz. He has onrushing linebackers set picks to give defensive linemen free runs at the quarterback. He preaches total buy-in, but you won’t see him admonishing a player on the sideline. Instead, he generally stands stoically, his eyes either trained on the field or peering down at his call sheet.
“I think there’s a perfect combination of what you play and how you play,” Minter said. “I think a lot of coaches lose that. For some people, it’s all about scheme. For some people, it’s all about effort and fundamentals. But having been in Baltimore, to me, it’s a perfect combination.
“You often hear the term, ‘Play like a Raven.’ That means 11 guys on the field playing together.”
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Macdonald has had five head-coaching interviews already and is awaiting a second with the Atlanta Falcons. Ravens fans are so concerned they might lose him that they have taken to social media to jokingly impugn him so other organizations stay away. Macdonald cracked a smile when asked about those attempts, saying his wife Stephanie has passed along some of the funnier ones.
Then after a quick grin, his game face returned.
He’s never going to be the first guy in the room to tell a joke. His idea of breaking the tension in meetings is dropping a line from a Jim Carrey comedy. Those are often met with quizzical looks from players, such as cornerback Brandon Stephens, who chuckled thinking about his coach’s “cheesy, lame jokes.”
“He’s a little bit of a football nerd,” Minter said. “And I mean that as a compliment.”
Maybe self-promotion is overrated.
One of the signature performances for Macdonald’s Ravens defense came in Baltimore’s heavyweight clash against the San Francisco 49ers, who host the Detroit Lions in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game. Both teams entered 11-3, but the Ravens forced five interceptions in the Christmas night tour de force, with Marcus Williams putting the finishing touches on the 33-19 victory by picking off San Francisco’s Sam Darnold in the game’s closing minutes.
Macdonald stomped around the sideline and wildly slapped the hand of defensive line coach Anthony Weaver, an outburst notable because it was so out of character.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Todd Olszewski, Fred Kfoury III / Getty Images)
Sports
Thunder lose star Jalen Williams for Western Conference Finals Game 7 as hamstring injury lingers
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Victor Wembanyama scored 28 points and 10 rebounds in the San Antonio Spurs’ 118-91 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the WCF. Jason McIntyre says that Wemby showed up in the biggest moments, and asks if he can carry this momentum into Game 7. Plus, he discusses Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s struggles and asks if he will cost the Thunder the series.
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The Oklahoma City Thunder will be shorthanded in Saturday’s pivotal Game 7, as one of Oklahoma’s key contributors has been sidelined with an injury.
OKC guard Jalen Williams has been ruled out for Game 7 with a hamstring issue, ESPN reported on Friday. Williams appeared to aggravate his left hamstring during the Thunder’s 122-113 victory in Game 2. He missed the next three games before returning for Game 6, but logged just 10 minutes off the bench in Oklahoma City’s loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday, which forced a winner-take-all Game 7.
“He’s obviously not 100%,” Mark Daigneault, the head coach of the Thunder, said.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jalen Williams watches during the fourth quarter against the San Antonio Spurs in Game One of the NBA Western Conference Finals at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on May 18, 2026. (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
Daigneault applauded Williams for fighting through the injury and doing everything he could to help Oklahoma City.
“He didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what to expect. So, it was a matter of getting him out there in kind of an insulated role and see what he can bring to the team. He’s an All-Star player, he’s an All-NBA player. He hasn’t done a full return to play [protocol] like he would if this was the regular season, and yet, he just wants to do whatever he can to try to contribute whatever he can to the team.”
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“I give him a lot of credit to get himself out there. He did the best he could. He’s certainly not the reason we lost.”
Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jalen Williams reacts to a shot by forward Luguentz Dort in the third quarter against the San Antonio Spurs during game one of the Western Conference finals for the 2026 NBA playoffs at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on May 18, 2026. (Alonzo Adams/Imagn Images)
Williams did not talk to reporters after Thursday’s game in San Antonio.
Williams underwent surgery last offseason to repair a wrist injury but still played a key role in the Thunder’s run to the NBA Finals last season. He appeared in just 33 regular-season games before this year’s playoffs.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jalen Williams drives into the paint during the first quarter of Game Two of the NBA Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on May 20, 2026. (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
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The winner of Saturday’s Game 7 will advance to the NBA Finals to face the New York Knicks. New York snapped a nearly three-decade Finals drought by sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.
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CLOVIS — Cool conditions produced a bunch of fast times Friday at the CIF state track and field championships.
Rosary Academy sprint coach Jon Gilmer was worried 4×100-meter relayers Tra’via Flournoy, Justine Wilson, Pfeiffer Lee and Maliyah Collins might get complacent at prelims, but the Royals were the top qualifiers in 45.13 seconds — nearly a full second faster than Canyon Country Canyon (46.07) — at Buchanan High School.
“It’s different not having Calabasas here,” Gilmer said. “Now we’ve got to push ourselves.”
Rosary set a state record (44.23) at the Arcadia Invitational on April 11, but lost to the Coyotes one week later at the Mt. SAC Relays. However, the anticipated state finals clash was not to be as Calabasas dropped the baton in the Southern Section finals and failed to advance.
Collins had a huge lead by the time she received the stick for the anchor leg Friday.
“This is maybe our fourth- or fifth-fastest time but we just wanted to make finals,” said Wilson, who ran the second leg before handing off to Lee. “We want to run faster tomorrow when we go for a PR, the meet and the state record.”
Calabasas might be out of the relay, but three Coyotes remain in contention in the 100, led by Malia Rainey (the top qualifier in 11.54), Marley Scoggins (11.63) and Olivia Kirk (11.63).
Calabasas sprinter Marley Scoggins, center, wins her 100-meter heat at the CIF state track and field preliminaries on Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Collins won her heat in 11.62, the third-fastest time.
Servite won the first heat in the boys 4×100 relay in 40.29 — two hundredths off its winning time at last year’s state finals — and is primed to defend its title in the event. Concord De La Salle (40.81) was the second-fastest qualifier, followed by the other heat winners, Rancho Cucamonga (40.87) and Loyola (40.93).
“We got the stick around pretty good today,” said Jorden Wells, who ran the first leg Friday instead of his customary second leg, which was run by Jaelen Hunter. “Did it feel different? Not really, I’ve done it before.”
Wells said his twin brother Jace will run the first leg Saturday, he will run the second while Kamil Pelovello and Benjamin Harris will stay in the third and fourth positions.
Harris, the favorite to win the 100 meters, won his heat in a wind-legal 10.36, but three others were fractions faster in wind-aided times — Elk Grove’s Cy Lugo (10.20), Will Wood’s Deshawn Seymour (10.34) and De La Salle’s Damari Dean (10.34). Newbury Park’s Jaden Griffin won the last heat in 10.37, setting the stage for an exciting finals sprint as all nine qualifiers ran under 10.48.
Harris put himself in position for a Saturday double by winning his 200 heat in 21.10 but as he did in the 100, Lugo (the Sac-Joaquin Section record holder) had the fastest time (20.73), followed by Seymour (20.88), Camren Hughes (20.93) of Palos Verdes and Jace Wells (21.02). Jordan Wells (21.11) also made the cut.
Newbury Park’s Jaden Griffin, center, shouts after winning his heat in the 100 meters at the CIF state track and field preliminaries on Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Servite (3:15.43) had the second-fastest qualifying time in the 4×400-meter relay behind only El Cerrito (3:14.96) of the North Coast Section.
Coming off a state-record 3:33.83 at the Masters Meet in Moorpark, Long Beach Wilson’s 4×400 girls relay had the fourth-fastest qualifying time (3:46.73) without two out of its best runners (Clara Adams and Saniah Varnado), taking second in the first heat behind San Luis Obispo (3:45.85) and safely advancing to the finals along with Heat 2 runner-up Rosary (3:45.08) and Heat 3 winner Canyon Country Canyon (3:46.77).
Having broken the Southern Section record in the 400 meters six days earlier in 51.98, Adams put it in cruise control to win her heat in 53.53, the fastest qualifying mark. Joining her in the final will be her three relay teammates Varnado (54.42), Wilson (54.57) and Fowler (54.62). Adams later won her 200 heat in 23.60, a tenth of a second behind fastest qualifier Naiaja Sizemore of Vanden.
San Jacinto Valley Academy’s Kaahliyah Lacy ran a wind-legal 13.59 for the top qualifying spot in the girls 100 hurdles and Varnado (40.85) was the top qualifier in the 300 hurdles.
Another showdown is brewing in the boys 400, where Loyola’s Ejam Yohannes (47.08) and Hunter (47.21) won their heats in the two fastest times Friday. Hunter clocked 46.32 to set a California freshman record last spring, but lost to Yohannes by 11 hundredths of a second at the Masters Meet.
City Section champion Jayden Rendon showed good form in his bid to defend the state 300 hurdles crown, posting the fastest prelims time (36.80). He also advanced to the finals in the 110 hurdles with a 13.83 effort. Moorpark’s Davis Benson (14.03) nabbed the last spot.
Corona Santiago’s Braelyn Combe, right, wins the first heat of the 800 meters at the CIF state track and field preliminaries on Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Corona Santiago senior Braelyn Combe won her 1,600 heat in 4:46.88 and is set for a four-lap battle with San Diego Section champion Chiara Dailey of La Jolla, who won the second heat in 4:46.00. Combe is the defending champion, having edged Hanne Thomsen of Santa Rosa Montgomery by five hundredths of a second in the finals last year.
“I just wanted to advance with as little effort as possible,” Combe said. “It was not as hard as I expected. I don’t want to leave any regrets. I’m taking it one race at a time.”
Combe also had the fastest time (2:08:25) of three heats in the 800 meters.
Venice senior Lawrence Kensinger, who set the City Section shot put record with a state-leading throw of 65 feet 11 inches last week, had the third-best mark at prelims (59-6¾) and easily advanced to the finals. Defending state high jump champion JJ Harel of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame tied nine others for the second-best mark (6-6) heading into the second day.
Aliso Niguel senior Jaslene Massey had the top marks in the girls shot put (51-3¾) and discus (175-6) and transgender athlete AB Hernandez from Jurupa Valley was the leading qualifier in the girls long jump (20-5½) and triple jump (41-8½) and was one of 13 qualifiers in the high jump.
AB Hernandez competes at the CIF state track and field preliminaries at Buchanan High School on Friday.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
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We’re approaching the biggest sporting event North America has ever hosted.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup takes place across the USA, Canada and Mexico in 13 days.
Bettors and fans already have their sights set on the global spectacle, which will kick off on June 11. The World Cup final will be held at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on July 19, 2026.
After the World Cup groups were announced in December, Spain opened as the favorite at +450, followed by England (+550) and France (+750).
Now, with less than two weeks to go, Spain has slightly drifted to +475, with both France and England making up ground on the oddsboard.
Let’s dive into the odds via DraftKings Sportsbook as of May 29.
This page may contain affiliate links to legal sports betting partners. If you sign up or place a wager, FOX Sports may be compensated. Read more about Sports Betting on FOX Sports.
2026 World Cup winner odds
Spain: +475 (bet $10 to win $57.5 total)
France: +500 (bet $10 to win $60 total)
England: +650 (bet $10 to win $75 total)
Brazil: +850 (bet $10 to win $95 total)
Argentina: +900 (bet $10 to win $100 total)
Portugal: +1000 (bet $10 to win $110 total)
Germany: +1400 (bet $10 to win $150 total)
Netherlands: +2200 (bet $10 to win $230 total)
Norway: +3500 (bet $10 to win $360 total)
Belgium: +3500 (bet $10 to win $360 total)
Colombia: +4000 (bet $10 to win $410 total)
Morocco: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)
Uruguay: +5000 (bet $10 to win $510 total)
United States: +6000 (bet $10 to win $610 total)
Switzerland: +6500 (bet $10 to win $660 total)
Japan: +6500 (bet $10 to win $660 total)
Mexico: +8000 (bet $10 to win $810 total)
Croatia: +8000 (bet $10 to win $810 total)
Ecuador: +8000 (bet $10 to win $810 total)
Senegal: +9000 (bet $10 to win $910 total)
Sweden: +10000 (bet $10 to win $1,010 total)
HOST NATIONS
United States
The United States is led by Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, and Chris Richards, with several players competing in Europe’s top leagues. The U.S. has appeared in 11 previous World Cups, with its best finish coming in 1930 when the team reached the semifinals.
Canada
Canada’s key players include Alphonso Davies and Jonathan David, giving the squad top-tier pace and goal-scoring ability. Canada has made two previous World Cup appearances, and is still looking for its first win ever in the tournament.
Mexico
Mexico’s top contributors include Raul Giménez and Edson Álvarez, forming a strong mix of attacking talent and midfield stability. Mexico has played in 17 previous World Cups and reached the quarterfinals twice, in 1970 and 1986.
UEFA TEAMS TO KNOW
Spain
Spain’s top talents include Pedri, Lamine Yamal and Rodri, forming a core that blends elite playmaking with scoring depth. Spain has appeared in 16 previous World Cups and won the tournament once, lifting the trophy in 2010. The team also won the 2024 Euros.
France
France enters with Kylian Mbappé as the star player, with the 26-year-old just five goals shy of passing Miroslav Klose (16) for the most career goals at the World Cup. France has made 16 previous World Cup appearances and won the title twice, in 1998 and 2018.
England
England’s key players include Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice, forming one of the nation’s strongest generations in decades. England has reached 16 previous World Cups and won the trophy once, in 1966.
Germany
Germany features Florian Wirtz, Jamal Musiala and Joshua Kimmich as central figures in a talented squad. Germany has participated in 20 previous World Cups and won four titles, most recently in 2014.
Portugal
Portugal’s top group includes Bruno Fernandes, Vitinha, with Cristiano Ronaldo still involved as the team’s all-time leading scorer and cap leader. Portugal has competed in eight previous World Cups and recorded its best finish in 2006, reaching the semifinals.
Netherlands
The Netherlands features top players such as Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch and Denzel Dumfries, forming a core built around elite defending and midfield control. Memphis Depay should also be on the team, the country’s all-time leading goalscorer. The Netherlands has appeared in 11 previous World Cups and finished as runner-up three times, in 1974, 1978 and 2010.
CONMEBOL TEAMS TO KNOW
Argentina
Argentina is anchored by Lionel Messi, with Julián Álvarez, Enzo Fernández and Lautaro Martínez— headlining one of the most talented rosters in the tournament. Argentina has played in 18 previous World Cups and won three, including the most recent tournament in 2022.
Brazil
Brazil’s roster is led by Vinícius Júnior, Raphinha and Marquinhos, giving the team elite attacking and defensive quality. Brazil has appeared in every World Cup and holds a record five titles, with its most recent one coming in 2002.
Uruguay
Uruguay’s leading players include Federico Valverde, Darwin Núñez and Ronald Araújo, forming a core with elite midfield range and speed. Uruguay has appeared in 14 previous World Cups and won the tournament twice, in 1930 and 1950.
Colombia
Colombia is headlined by Luis Díaz and James Rodríguez, with the former playing for Bayern Munich and the latter having a decorated World Cup résumé. Colombia has made six previous World Cupsand recorded its best finish in 2014, reaching the quarterfinals.
CAF TEAMS TO KNOW
Morocco
Morocco’s key contributors include Achraf Hakimi, Noussair Mazaroui and Brahm Díaz, each with major European club experience. Morocco has appeared in six previous World Cups and achieved its historic best finish in 2022, reaching the semifinals.
Senegal
Senegal’s top players include Sadio Mané, Kalidou Koulibaly and Idrissa Gueye, forming one of Africa’s most experienced cores. Senegal has appeared in three World Cups and reached its best finish in 2002, advancing to the quarterfinals.
Ghana
Ghana is led by Mohammed Kudus, Antoine Semenyo and Inaki Williams, giving the squad strong playmaking and midfield presence. Ghana has competed in four previous World Cups and reached its best result in 2010, making the quarterfinals.
AFC TEAMS TO KNOW
South Korea
South Korea is headlined by Son Heung-min, supported by key players such as Kim Min-jae and Lee Kang-in. South Korea has played in 11 previous World Cups and reached its best finish in 2002, advancing to the semifinals as co-host.
Japan
Japan features Takefusa Kubo and Kaoru Mitoma as its leading players, blending top European experience with emerging talent. Japan has appeared in seven previous World Cups and reached the Round of 16 four times, its best result to date.
Australia
Australia’s top players include Jackson Irvine and keeper Mathew Ryan as its most experienced members. Australia has competed in six previous World Cups and reached the round of 16 twice, in 2006 and 2022.
OFC TEAMS TO KNOW
New Zealand
New Zealand is led by all-time leading scorer Chris Wood, with 45 international goals to his name. New Zealand has appeared in two previous World Cups (1982, 2010), and did not advance from the group stage in either appearance.
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