Join The Club
When you go back through the annals of World Cup history, some of the most memorable tournament moments are those when an unfancied team upsets the apple cart and gatecrashes the latter stages of the competition.
Just about every one of the 22 World Cups played so far have seen a dark horse from outside the sport’s established elite crash the party, such as 2022 semi-finalists Morocco, third-placed finishers Turkey in 2002 or Cameroon who took England to the brink in the 1990 quarter-finals.
So who are the under-the-radar teams to keep an eye on when the action gets underway in North America later this week? FourFourTwo runs over some contenders…
Norway
Norway are making their first World Cup appearance since 1998 and have something of a Golden Generation, which puts them in pole dark horse position.
No team in world football will ever want to play a fit and firing Erling Haaland, while freshly-minted Premier League title-winning skipper Martin Odegaard will be joined by the likes of Oscar Bobb, Julian Ryerson and Alexander Sorloth in a squad that features plenty of experience of playing in - and winning - Europe’s top five leagues.
Haaland’s 16 strikes in qualifying didn’t even make up half of the team’s European-best of 37 goals and the whole team will need to be firing if they are to see off France, Senegal and Iraq in one of the competition’s toughest groups.
Ecuador
Much has been made of the challenging climate that teams will face in North America and if any team is well-placed to take advantage of any European struggles in the heat, it will be Ecuador.
And it’s not just the conditioning of La Tricolor that the World Cup elder statement need to worry about, as under boss Sebastian Beccacece, Ecuador have lost just once in 19 matches and finished behind only Argentina in South American qualifcation.
In Moises Caicedo, Piero Hincapie and Willian Pacho they plenty of big-name players who have come together to make a tough, hard to beat outfit that are more than capable of getting out of a group containing Germany, Ivory Coast and Curacao and matching their 2006 run to the last-16. Their football may not always be pretty, but it can be very effective.
Mexico
Host nations are often able to leveage being on home soil to over-perform, and from the three we have to chose from this time out, it is Mexico who look the most likely to trouble the second half of the tournament.
Placed alongside Czech Republic, South Korea and South Africa in Group A, Mexico are in the habit of winning tournaments, having triumphed in the Gold Cup 12 months ago, which came shortly after their Nations League success.
Their recent form is good and if veterans such as Edson Alvarez and Raul Jimenez can click with younger talents like teenage midfielder Gilberto Mora, then they can be confident of a first win in the knockout stage since 1986.
Sweden
If you’re in the market for a complete wild card who are just as likely to surge into the final stages as they are to stink the place out in the group stage, then Sweden may be the side for you.
After a dire qualification campaign in which they finished bottom of their group and cost Jon Dahl Tomasson his job, the Swedes took full advantage of the secondary Nations League route to get past Poland in the play-offs under Graham Potter.
While his stock may have been damaged following his stints at Chelsea and West Ham, Potter remains popular in Sweden, where he had his coaching breakthrough at Ostersund, and he has leaned into a more traditional style of play that combines a tight defence with swift counterattacks.
If Potter’s side remain organised at the back, Viktor Gyokeres and Alexander Isak should be able to take their chances, which will give them a chance of progressing out of a tough group that contains the Netherlands, Japan (another decent dark horse shout) and Tunisia.
