World Cup 2026 Ramblings - Warming Up

Who's following the World Cup 2026?

Hive has been pretty quiet lately. I was searching if there were any World Cup posts, because I recalled there was even a community created for the previous edition. Fortunately, I found World Cup posts in this Sports Talk Social community! So it is my first post here!

I would rate myself as a moderate fan of football/soccer. I am not a hardcore fan or know all the players' names by memory, but I do follow once in a while, and I would take effort to read up for each tournament.

However I have been pretty slow this time, hence the title Warming Up. I had some personal drama in the past few weeks, and while things haven't returned to 100% normalcy, I do find myself gravitating to the World Cup matches during my free time.

There are 48 countries this time! This was the biggest change and not only were there so many foreign countries that I haven't seen before, the number of teams and matches to keep track were quite a nightmare for me. And because of this relatively awkward number of 48, they had to adjust the elimination/qualification of the last 32 to the top 2 of each group plus top 8 out of the 12 third-placed teams. Oh my, this is like high level strategising!

At time of writing, some countries have unfortunately been eliminated, but we are nowhere closer to the winner because the next stage is the Round of 32. And if you think about it, that is no different from the start of the past World Cup tournaments, which have just 32 teams right from the start. So in a way, the group stage feels like a slow start or a warm up (hehe) and we are just about to get to real business.

So maybe I am not too late. Hahaha.

Another statistic I noticed is that this World Cup has seen a lot of more goals on average compared to the previous editions, and if we analyse this on hindsight, I think it's partly due to the disparity in the quality of the teams. Last time, I think it's more competitive because the teams are tighter, but this time, 48 teams seem like a long. Maybe we should do away with qualifying and hold the World Cup directly for the entire world via knockout. That way, my country Singapore would "make it" to the World Cup. Lol I am kidding.

Speaking of teams, I actually don't have a favourite team and I don't really support any teams. May the best team win - I always say. For me, I think it's purely for the entertainment, and riding the ups and downs of the rollercoaster results. We are probably too early for any big upsets or elimination of big teams, but with the Round of 32 looming, who knows what it would bring.

Alright that's all I have for now! All the best to all the teams!