Forty-eight hours from kickoff and Spain are still the team to beat — but with a torn hamstring shadowing their best player and a defence that hasn't looked convincing all spring, 'favourites' feels like a generous word right now.
ESPN's panel of 20 global reporters ranked their top 15 World Cup contenders ahead of June 11's opener between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City. Here's what the collective ballot tells us — and what it doesn't.
Spain on top, questions included
La Roja gained three more first-place votes than at the 30-day mark, which is remarkable given everything swirling around the squad. Lamine Yamal — their most dangerous weapon, 18 years old and already irreplaceable — hasn't played in a month after tearing his hamstring late in the club season. Luis de la Fuente insists he'll be fit for the opener against Cape Verde on June 15. He might be right. But Spain's recent 1-1 draw with Egypt — four chances created, two-thirds of possession, conceding to one of Egypt's two shots on target — isn't the form of a team coasting into a tournament.
Add uncertainty in goal between Unai Simón and whoever de la Fuente trusts more on a given day, questions over who leads the attack, and a central defensive unit (Cubarsí, Laporte, García) that hasn't looked convincing together, and you've got a team relying heavily on individual quality to paper over tactical gaps. Rodri's fitness is the other thread worth pulling — an up-and-down season with injuries means you're getting a version of him, not necessarily the best one.
Still: Spain top the rankings because nothing they've shown suggests another team is clearly better. That's both a compliment and a mild indictment of the field.
France (2nd) collected six first-place votes on the back of a genuinely frightening attacking unit. Ousmane Dembélé, Michael Olise, and Désiré Doué will cause problems for anyone in Group I. Didier Deschamps — in his farewell tournament after 14 years — has the squad to send himself off with a third World Cup. William Saliba's back issue has been cleared by team doctors. A 2-1 warm-up loss to Ivory Coast will worry no one if they hit the ground running against Senegal on June 16.
Argentina (3rd) are chasing something that hasn't been done since Brazil in 1958 and 1962: back-to-back World Cup titles. Messi is still the catalyst, still defying biology with careful load management at Inter Miami. But this squad has aged around him, and the supporting cast isn't in peak shape — Cristian Romero has been racing to recover from a knee injury, Alexis Mac Allister had one of his worst seasons at Liverpool, and Julián Álvarez has scored three times for club and country since April. Their group (Algeria, Austria, Jordan) is gentle enough to mask those issues for now.
England's Tuchel gamble and the Kane factor
England picked up zero first-place votes. Thomas Tuchel left out Trent Alexander-Arnold, Cole Palmer, Phil Foden, Harry Maguire, and Adam Wharton — all of whom had expected to travel — and brought in Ivan Toney, John Stones, and Jordan Henderson instead. It's unconventional. It's also very deliberate: 20 of his 26 selections were called into his very first England camp, so the shape of this squad has been visible since day one.
What makes England dangerous is Harry Kane, who scored 64 goals in 56 games across all competitions for Bayern Munich this season. That's not a hot streak — that's a striker at the peak of his powers. Bukayo Saka, Anthony Gordon, and Noni Madueke offer width and pace; Jude Bellingham and Morgan Rogers compete for the No. 10 role; Declan Rice, 55 appearances this season for Arsenal, anchors the midfield. England's price to win the tournament will look generous to anyone who trusts Tuchel's in-game adjustments to make the difference in tight knockout games.
Brazil (5th) under Carlo Ancelotti are an intriguing proposition built more on feel than structure — a potential 4-2-4 with Vinicius Jr., Raphinha, Matheus Cunha, and Igor Thiago (22 Premier League goals for Brentford) in attack. Warm-up wins over Panama (6-2) and Egypt (2-1) suggest the attacking chaos can work. Whether the defence holds is a genuine open question, but Ancelotti has managed bigger egos than this and still won trophies.
Portugal (6th) remain defined by the Ronaldo question. The 41-year-old wants the one trophy he doesn't have; the team's best football flows through Bruno Fernandes. Roberto Martinez needs to manage that tension across potentially seven games. His supporting cast — Bernardo Silva, Rúben Dias, Vitinha, Pedro Neto, Rafael Leão — is legitimately world-class. Whether Ronaldo lets them breathe is the subplot that follows Portugal everywhere.
The rest: chaos candidates and fading giants
Germany (7th) are unknowable in the best and worst sense. The Florian Wirtz who dominated for Leverkusen and the one who muddled through his first Liverpool season are two different players. Jamal Musiala's form, Kai Havertz's suitability as a No. 9, and Manuel Neuer returning from injury at 40 having un-retired three weeks ago — Julian Nagelsmann has a lot of variables to align.
Netherlands (8th) always punch through, no matter how tired they look on paper. Argentina needed penalties to eliminate them in 2022. England needed an injury-time goal at Euro 2024. But Virgil van Dijk played every minute of Liverpool's 38-game Premier League season, Jurriën Timber is injured out of the squad, and Bart Verbruggen landed awkwardly in the final warm-up. Ronald Koeman's contract ends after the tournament with no renewal talks underway. This feels like a generation signing off.
Morocco (9th) changed managers in March — Walid Regragui out, Mohamed Ouahbi in — and Achraf Hakimi's fitness after a difficult end to PSG's season is the central variable. Their 4-1-4-1 is built to suffocate, but they need Brahim Díaz, Bilal El Khannouss, and Ismael Saibari to produce going forward if they want to recreate the 2022 semifinal magic.
Norway (10th) qualified via playoff after a precarious path, then thumped Italy 4-1. Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard are legitimate match-winners. If Sander Berge, Oscar Bobb, and Antonio Nusa deliver around them, Group I becomes interesting — though France in the third game will test everything Stale Solbakken has built.
- Belgium (11th): Kevin De Bruyne has slowed, Romelu Lukaku played just seven games all season due to injury, and a qualifying campaign against Wales, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia and Liechtenstein — five wins from eight — told us very little. Jérémy Doku and Leandro Trossard are their most dynamic current players. Build around them or go home early.
- Colombia (12th): Luis Díaz in Bayern form is one of the most dangerous wide players at the tournament. James Rodríguez at 34 still controls tempo. Their defensive exposure — attack-minded fullbacks leaving Lucumí and Sánchez isolated — is the liability that could unravel a promising run.
- Senegal (13th): The best African side in the tournament, with Kalidou Koulibaly's leadership, Sadio Mané's unpredictability, and Nicolas Jackson's 11-goal loan season at Bayern as their striker option. A 3-2 friendly defeat to the U.S., where the press was carved open repeatedly, is worth watching before they face France on June 16.
- Croatia (14th): Luka Modric is 40. Ivan Perisic is 37. They've made back-to-back World Cup semifinals anyway. The new arrivals — Josko Gvardiol, Luka Vuskovic, Martin Baturina — will need to do the running. They're drawn against England first, which tells you everything about how difficult their path is.
- Japan (15th): Kaoru Mitoma and Takumi Minamino are both out injured. Wataru Endo is barely fit. And yet Hajime Moriyasu's 3-4-2-1 — built around Takefusa Kubo and wing back Keito Nakamura — still produced a warm-up win over England. Nobody will outwork them. Whether depth without its key pieces holds across a full tournament is the real question.
Two days out, Spain are the team the market and the press box both trust most. But in a 48-team field with expanded knockout paths, a healthy Yamal is worth more to their odds than any tactical adjustment de la Fuente might make. Watch June 15 closely.
