La Roja out-passed and out-lasted Argentina in New Jersey to win a second title, but the real story of the first 48-team World Cup was written across three countries, sixteen cities and a month of chaos, class and controversy.
This was the World Cup that FIFA supersized. Forty-eight teams, 104 matches, three host nations and sixteen stadiums stretched the tournament into a month-long continental road trip across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The opening ceremony and a star-studded closing halftime show, featuring Shakira, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, BTS and Justin Bieber, underlined FIFA’s ambition to sell the tournament as much as the football.
The expansion delivered its share of romance. Cape Verde, a nation of roughly 535,000 people, became the toast of the tournament, holding pre-tournament favourites Spain to a scoreless draw and pushing eventual champions Argentina to extra time in the round of 32 before bowing out 3-2. Curaçao, with a population smaller than many mid-sized towns, scored against four-time champions Germany in Houston in a moment of pure underdog joy, even as the game eventually ran away from them. Debutants across the board, from the Caribbean to Central Asia, gave the group stage its warmest storylines.
“Forty-eight teams does not work. It made the group stages feel like a non-event.”
— from a panel of football writers reviewing the tournament
Not everyone was charmed by the bigger picture, though. Several observers argued that nine third-place qualifiers and a format prioritising head-to-head results over goal difference drained tension from the group phase, and that a smaller, sharper 32-team draw produced better theatre. It is a debate that will follow FIFA into 2030.
THE THRILLS: CHAOS, COMEBACKS AND ONE RUTHLESS MACHINE
If Spain were the tournament’s quiet metronome, England were its chaos agents. Rarely the most fluent side on the pitch, England turned almost every fixture into a drama, riding late goals and controversy all the way to the semi-finals before Argentina produced a stunning late comeback to end their run. Their round-of-16 demolition of Croatia, inspired by a Harry Kane brace, was one of the tournament’s most eye-catching individual performances.
Elsewhere, Egypt’s dramatic penalty-shootout win over Australia and their spirited 3-2 defeat to Argentina, in which Mohamed Salah inspired the Pharaohs to their first-ever World Cup knockout victory, produced some of the rawest emotion of the summer. Senegal’s collapse against Belgium, having led 2-0 with four minutes left, and Cabo Verde’s extra-time heartbreak against Argentina both live on as tournament highlights for entirely opposite reasons: one team’s capitulation, another’s fearless overachievement.
Through it all, Spain simply kept winning, and kept it boring for opponents in the best possible way: seven clean-ish sheets, a single goal conceded, and a squad built on the same collective, Barcelona-inflected principles that carried them to the European Championship.
THE BIG DISAPPOINTMENTS
For a tournament staged on their own turf, the co-hosts had a summer to forget on the pitch. All three were gone by the round of 16: Canada fell to Morocco, Mexico were beaten by England, and the United States, the supposed protagonists of their own World Cup, were eliminated by Belgium. For a federation that has spent a decade building toward this moment, an exit before the quarter-finals was a hard landing.
Off the pitch, the criticism was louder still. Reporting on the treatment of Iran’s delegation in the United States drew sharp condemnation from several outlets, who called it emblematic of the political strain running underneath the co-hosted tournament. Ticket prices, patchy transit links between stadiums and host cities, and the sheer scale of travel demanded of both fans and players across three enormous countries were persistent talking points. Egypt’s football association formally protested a disallowed goal and a denied penalty in their round-of-16 defeat to Argentina, with coach Hossam Hassan telling reporters his side had been “cheated,” a claim FIFA’s refereeing chief Pierluigi Collina firmly rejected.
The 48-team format itself became a lightning rod. Critics warned before a ball was kicked that it would dilute quality and multiply dead-rubber fixtures, and while the football mostly avoided that trap, complaints about bloated scheduling, congested calendars and the integrity risk of teams knowing exactly what result would send both through in final group games persisted deep into the tournament.
WHAT THE PRAISE-SINGERS SAID
For all the grumbling, plenty of voices came away won over. Supporters of the expanded format point to Africa’s best-ever World Cup showing, Cape Verde’s fairy tale, Curaçao’s giant-killing cameo and a stream of shock results as proof that more teams mean more stories, not fewer. Commentators repeatedly praised the emotional intensity of England’s knockout run and the technical purity of Spain’s football as evidence that quality and access were not, in the end, mutually exclusive. FIFA’s own messaging leaned hard into the idea of a tournament that had made the game “truly global,” pointing to record participation and unprecedented reach across three nations as a legacy in itself.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
The sceptics were just as vocal by the tournament’s close. Structural complaints about the 48-team format, the loss of jeopardy in bloated groups, and refereeing controversies ran alongside sharper criticism of the host nations’ organisation: transit access, ticketing and player welfare across a sprawling three-country footprint all drew repeated fire. Some pointed out that none of the three co-hosts advanced past the last sixteen as proof that home advantage counted for little this time, while others suggested the tournament’s sheer size had begun to strain what a World Cup can reasonably ask of fans, broadcasters and players alike.
DID THE US, CANADA AND MEXICO REALLY DELIVER?
As hosts, the verdict is mixed. Commercially and spectacularly, the tournament delivered: huge stadiums, blanket global broadcast coverage, a starry halftime show and a genuine sense of occasion in cities from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Toronto. Attendances were strong, and record numbers of nations gave more fans a stake in the tournament than ever before.
But the logistics of staging a World Cup across a continent-sized footprint showed. Transit access at several venues, including the final’s own New Jersey site, became part of a running debate about whether stadiums built for American football and baseball, spread across vast distances, could ever replicate the compact, walkable charm of past European or South American tournaments. And on the pitch, the symbolism of all three co-hosts exiting at the first knockout hurdle undercut the pre-tournament narrative that home advantage, three automatic qualifications and years of preparation would finally deliver a deep run for at least one of the hosts.
LESSONS FOR AFRICAN TEAMS
Statistically, this was the best World Cup Africa has ever had. Nine of the continent’s ten representatives, a record haul that included debutants Cape Verde, reached the round of 32, a 90 per cent qualification rate unmatched by any other confederation. Morocco and Egypt both advanced further, on penalties, to the round of 16, with Egypt’s win over Australia marking the country’s first-ever World Cup knockout victory and Morocco reaching the quarter-finals for a second consecutive tournament.
Seven of Africa’s nine knockout-stage teams lost to late, in some cases last-minute, goals.
— a pattern that repeated itself across the round of 32
But the round of 32 also exposed a recurring theme that CAF’s coaches and analysts will need to confront before 2030: composure in the closing stages. Canada beat South Africa with a 92nd-minute winner, Norway eliminated Ivory Coast with an 86th-minute strike, England ended DR Congo’s run in the same fashion, and both Senegal, who had led Belgium 2-0 with four minutes left, and Cabo Verde fell in extra time. Only Morocco, unbeaten in regular time and disciplined in game management, turned African promise into a deep run, eventually falling in the quarter-finals.
The lesson is not about quality; African teams were competitive with, and often dominant against, bigger footballing nations for long stretches of these matches. It is about closing games out: managing leads, seeing out extra time, and holding nerve in the moments that this World Cup proved decide knockout football at the highest level. With Morocco set to co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal, the continent has both a template, in the Atlas Lions’ composure, and a deadline to bridge that gap.
THE LAST WORD
A World Cup that began with scepticism about size ends with a champion built on precision rather than scale. Spain’s quiet, suffocating brilliance was the antidote to a tournament otherwise defined by its sprawl, its noise and its unresolved arguments about what a World Cup should be. Forty-eight teams gave the world Cape Verde and Curaçao; it also gave FIFA a format it will keep tinkering with. Three co-hosts gave the tournament its scale and its spectacle, but none gave it a home-soil hero. And Africa leaves North America with its best World Cup on record and a clear, if painful, homework assignment for 2030.
For now, the trophy is Spain’s, Lamine Yamal has a title before his twentieth birthday, and Lionel Messi’s extraordinary World Cup story has, in all likelihood, reached its final page.
