Ranking 2026 World Cup national team contenders by talent

We’ve still got a long way to go until the World Cup kicks off next June. Outside of the three hosts — the U.S., Mexico, and Canada — and, as of Thursday, Japan, no one else has even qualified yet.

Over the next 15 months, a lot can change — and a lot will change. Players will switch allegiances. Stars will get injured. Prospects will become stars. Veterans will have career years. Promising players will fall out with new managers. Someone might eat tainted meat.

Just take Argentina. About 15 months before the last World Cup, they beat Bolívia 3-0 in qualifying, and Lionel Messi scored a hat trick. (OK, fine, some things never change.) Of the 11 players who started that match, just five started the World Cup final win against France. So, at this point before the World Cup, the best national team in the world experienced a more-than-50% turnover by the time the tournament started.

It was no different for the U.S. men’s national team, either. Of the 11 players who started the 4-1 qualifying win over Honduras in September 2021, six didn’t even make the 2022 World Cup roster!

So, as a rule of thumb: whatever teams you see on the field during the current international break, expect those teams to be at least 50% different when you see them at the 2025 World Cup.

But while starting lineups are fungible, the overall quality of the player pool is not. Outside of a handful of dual nationals, the players eligible to play for Brazil or Belgium or Bulgaria won’t change from now until next summer.

So, with over a year to go, it’s worth taking stock of the quality of talent available to every national team, and then we’ll rank the top 50, from last to first.

How the World Cup contender rankings work

There are essentially three levels to national team talent:

1) Overall depth: How many quality players do you have?

2) High-end depth: How many starter-quality players do you have?

3) World-class talent: How many stars do you have?

To quantify all of that, we’re relying on three key metrics.

For overall depth, we’re looking at how many minutes players from each country have played in one of Europe’s “Big Five” top leagues.

For high-end depth, we’re looking at how many minutes players from each country have played in the Champions League.

And for world-class talent, we’re looking at the crowd-sourced market values from Transfermarkt. The latter numbers are based on the combined market values of the national-team squads called in for the current window.

We’ve given the market values a bit more weight than the other two factors (40%, then 30% for both Champions League and Big Five minutes) because it should also account for and differentiate between players who are playing in, say, the sixth-biggest league in the world and then 18th-biggest league in the world.

Finally, we’ve normalized the numbers to the same scale and simply added them all up to create the final rankings.

Tier Six: Not that different from a bunch of teams outside of the top 50

50. Albania

49. Burkina Faso

48. Wales

47. Congo DR

46. Bosnia and Herzegovina

45. Egypt

This is the top-heaviest team in the world. Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush have a combined market value of €130 million, while no one else on the team comes in above €8 million.

With Salah and Marmoush, Egypt have more world-class talent than most of the other teams on this list. It certainly makes them a dangerous team — imagine having to deal with Salah and Marmoush playing together on the counter next summer — but it also makes them heavily dependent on the form and health of only two players.

44. Mexico

Fans of El Tri haven’t been happy since … 2018? And they’re not wrong to feel like the talent pool has stagnated. Raúl Jiménez, Edson Álvarez, Johan Vásquez and Santiago Gimenez are the only Mexicans currently playing significant minutes across Europe’s Big Five leagues.

43. South Korea

42. Republic of Ireland

41. Georgia

40. Mali

39. Canada

To quantify Canada’s talent pool advantage against that of fellow Concacaf team Mexico: Their players have played 9,398 minutes across the Big Five leagues so far this season, while Mexico’s are down at 6,617. Their players have featured in 2,000-plus Champions League minutes already, while Mexico no longer have any players left in the competition and will remain stuck at 481.

38. Hungary

37. Cameroon

Along with Wales, Cameroon are the only country to appear in the top 50 without a single player playing a single minute in the Champions League this season.

36. Slovenia

35. Slovakia

34. Algeria

33. Scotland

32. Ghana

31. Czechia

Tier Five: The massive middle

30. Greece

29. Senegal

28. Ecuador

Ecuador ranks only 47th for the total number of minutes played across the Big Five leagues, but they’re 30th in Champions League minutes and 24th in market value.

If Egypt’s performance is reliant on two stars, then Ecuador, perhaps, are the higher-floor version of a similar predicament. They don’t have a ton of overall depth, but they have a solid core of players — Chelsea’s Moisés Caicedo, PSG’s Willian Pacho, Bayer Leverkusen’s Piero Hincapié and Brighton’s Pervis Estupiñán — performing at an excellent level.

27. Colombia

Colombia are the opposite of Ecuador. Their players have played more than 20,000 minutes across the Big Five leagues compared to under 10,000 for Ecuador, but their only true star-level performer is Liverpool’s Luis Díaz.

That seems like the profile of a high-floor, low-ceiling team, but the presence of an aging James Rodríguez — who is currently playing in Liga MX but was arguably the best player at the Copa America last summer — gives this team way more upside (and volatility) than a ranking of No. 27 suggests.

Just take it from James himself, who recently said the following when given a choice between himself and his former manager: “Zidane was very good. In his prime he won the World Cup, but … James. In my prime, James.”

26. Poland

25. Ivory Coast

Only 12 countries have seen their players play more minutes across the Big Five leagues this season, but the lack of Champions League minutes (35th) speaks to a team that’s missing a Yaya Touré or a Didier Drogba-level star from its current generation.

24. Turkey

23. Serbia

22. Austria

21. Japan

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20. United States

Maybe this can serve as an expectation-setting exercise for the USMNT fan base. Or, you know, definitely not. But here’s where Mauricio Pochettino’s team ranks across the three different numbers we’re tracking:

• Big Five minutes played: 23,738, 26th (one below Cameroon, one above Algeria)
• Champions League minutes played: 5,182, 17th (one below Poland, one above Norway)
• Market value: €292.4 million, 20th (one below Colombia, one above Croatia)

So, 25 other countries have players playing more minutes across the Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1. Sixteen countries have players playing more minutes in the Champions League. And 20 countries have rosters that the wider world considers to be more valuable than the USMNT’s.

Throw in home-field advantage and as of right now, this is a team who should probably qualify for the round of 16. But even though their own coach recently suggested the U.S. could be the best team in the world within the next five years, a quarterfinal appearance next summer would exceed any rational expectations.

19. Nigeria

18. Uruguay

17. Ukraine

16. Morocco

15. Croatia

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14. Sweden

If Egypt also had a bunch of players playing in the Big Five leagues, they’d be Sweden. Forwards Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyökeres combine for an estimated transfer value of €175 million.

Tier Four: Lots of stars or lots of starters

13. Norway

Will we finally get to see this generation of stars get to compete in a major tournament? The combined market value of Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard (€300 million) is the second-highest combined value of any pair of players on any national team.

The weakness for Norway, then, comes in the group of players behind them. They rank just 22nd and 18th, respectively, for the number of minutes played in the Big Five leagues and the Champions League.

12. Switzerland

11. Denmark

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10. Belgium

Tier Three: Between generations

9. Argentina

It’s really hard for a national team from a non-Big Five country to gin up a top-five number of Big Five minutes. The pathways into the teams that compete in the top-flight leagues in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France are clearest for players born in those countries. And outside of the Big Five, the Netherlands, and Brazil, Argentina have the most players playing Big Five minutes.

That’s about as good as you can expect. And then Argentina are also only one of 10 national teams with at least 10,000 Champions League minutes this season.

But there are two reasons Argentina don’t rank higher: 1) Lionel Messi isn’t on the current roster, and 2) they still don’t have their next Messi.

Obviously, there won’t be another Messi, but beyond him, they’re still lacking a true, game-breaking superstar. Julián Álvarez might get there — and he might already be there if his current form at Atletico Madrid becomes permanent — but none of their players currently rank in the top 15 for market value, per Transfermarkt.

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8. Portugal

The story is quite similar for Portugal. While they are absolutely better off without the current version of Cristiano Ronaldo playing any important minutes, they, too, haven’t developed another player who quite fits into that same top-tier class that Argentina is lacking.

Now, Portugal have a ton of high-quality depth — over 60,000 minutes across the Big Five and nearly 15,000 minutes in the Champions League — but their highest-valued player is Rafael Leão, who, at €75 million, is tied for 34th in the Transfermarkt value rankings.

7. Italy

6. Netherlands

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Tier Two: It’s been 10 years — or more

5. Brazil

Brazilian players have played the most minutes in the Big Five leagues of any non-Big Five nation. And in the Champions League, they’ve played more minutes than English players and only fewer than Spanish, Dutch, French and German players. Their current roster’s market value, too, only trails the French, the Spanish, and the English.

In other words, we’ve reached that time of the cycle where I start to convince myself that the team that’s won the most World Cups might win another World Cup. They should be able to figure out a way to get Raphinha, Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo all on the field together. That’s as good of a front three as you’ll see next summer.

Bruno Guimarães is one of the best two-way midfielders in the world. There’s no one better than Alisson in goal, and Gabriel and Marquinhos make up maybe the best non-French center back pairing in the world.

But Brazil are only ranked fifth, basically, because they somehow stopped producing world-class players at the two positions they used to dominate: holding midfield and fullback.

4. Germany

German players are third in Big Five minutes and second in Champions League minutes, but the highest levels of the team might be stuck between generations.

In Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz, they already have two of the best attacking midfielders in the world. We already know they can play together (see: last summer’s Euros), and we should also expect them both to get better since neither one has turned 23 yet.

But after that, who is Germany’s third-best player? Probably either 30-year-old Joshua Kimmich or 32-year-old Antonio Rüdiger.

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3. England

This is the most valuable national team in the world — by a margin of nearly €100 million. Per Transfermakt, there are 12 players with an estimated market value of more than €100 million right now. And five of them are English: Declan Rice, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham.

So … why not higher? They might be a victim of their own domestic league’s success. Since the Premier League is richer than all of the other leagues, it attracts more foreign players than Spain, Germany, Italy and France do. As such, England ranks fifth for the number of Big Five minutes played and seventh for the number of Champions League minutes played.

That’s mostly nitpicking, I think, but the lack of lower-end depth showed up last summer when the team was starting Kieran Trippier, a right back, at left back, had no backup for Rice, and opted for John Stones at center back after he’d started only 12 Premier League games for Manchester City the season prior.

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Tier One: The last two winners of the two major tournaments

2. Spain

1. France

Spain won the Euros, and France were the last European team to win the World Cup. But given the absolutely baffling depth produced by France year after year — so much of it coming from Paris, the city with the most soccer talent on planet Earth — it’s no surprise that they’re here. Karim Benzema, Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté all unexpectedly missed the World Cup … and France were still mere penalty kicks away from going back to back.

They have enough center backs to stock an entire World Cup’s worth of teams, Ousmane Dembélé is the best player in the world right now, Kylian Mbappé is on pace to become the best World Cup player since Pele, and PSG’s reorientation toward young talent has helped fast-track a bunch of other fun, promising stars into prominence.

It’s Spain’s presence in the top two that might be a little surprising. OK, it’s not surprising after what happened last summer, but this was a team that couldn’t figure out how to pass the ball forward in the knockout rounds of each of the past two World Cups and didn’t even make it out of the group stages at the tournament before that.

While Barcelona’s era of dominance transformed the national team in the process, Real Madrid’s run of five European cups over the past eight years had almost nothing to do with Spanish soccer or any kind of Spanish way of playing. It was just Real Madrid being Real Madrid.

Then, all of a sudden, Barcelona birthed another golden generation, Rodri made the leap into a Ballon d’Or winner, and Lamine Yamal showed us that the next Messi was going to appear before the current Messi even stopped playing.

Spain has never lacked for squad or even starter-level depth, but their recent fall-off coincided with a dearth of high-end game-breaking talent. Well, the superstars are here now, and they’re backed up by the most Big Five minutes of any country and the fourth-most Champions League minutes.

Add that all together and what do you get? With 15 months to go, Spain are the betting favorites to win the World Cup.