Three African sides
to watch in North America. No odds. Just the football.

Morocco arrive at the 2026 World Cup as the only African nation to have ever reached a semi-final at this tournament — and as a side three and a half years into Walid Regragui's tenure, which began with the most successful hundred-day window any African head coach has overseen. The Qatar 2022 run remains the country's defining sporting achievement: a block-and-counter 4-1-4-1 that beat Belgium in the group, Spain on penalties in the round of 16 (Yassine Bono saving two of three Spanish kicks in the shootout), and Portugal 1-0 in the quarter-final on a Youssef En-Nesyri header. They lost the semi-final 2-0 to France and the third-place play-off 2-1 to Croatia, finishing fourth.

Three years later, that generation is the squad's spine. Achraf Hakimi at PSG — now a Champions League winner after the club's 2024-25 European title — is one of the world's best wing-backs and the team's most decorated active footballer. Sofyan Amrabat continues as the deep midfield screen. En-Nesyri, now at Fenerbahçe, remains the first-choice number 9 and Morocco's all-time leading World Cup scorer. Around them, two genuinely new pieces: Brahim Díaz, the Real Madrid attacking midfielder who switched his international allegiance from Spain to Morocco in March 2024 after a single senior friendly cap; and a rebuilt central midfield around Bilal El Khannouss and the next wave of Moroccan academy graduates.

Regragui's brief for 2026 has been to make the Qatar 2022 structure more attacking without losing what made it work in the first place — defensive discipline, counter-pressing in midfield, set-piece organisation. The AFCON 2025-26 campaign Morocco co-hosted from December through January was the rehearsal. Group C is genuinely difficult: Brazil under Carlo Ancelotti is the seeded test, Scotland are organised pot-3 opposition with a coherent block of their own, Haiti are the unpredictable underdog. Morocco's tournament does not turn on the group — they will top it or finish second by a thin margin — but on the round of 16 and the bracket beyond. The post-Qatar question is structural: whether the football that worked in 2022 still works against teams that have now had three years to study it.

Senegal arrive at the 2026 World Cup with a generation that has won an AFCON (2021) but never converted that confederation success into a deep World Cup run — and with a head coach in his first major-tournament cycle who was promoted from inside Aliou Cissé's staff. Pape Thiaw took over in September 2024 after Cissé's ten-year tenure ended without contract renewal — the federation's response to Senegal's AFCON 2023 round-of-16 exit on penalties to Ivory Coast, the defending champions out before the quarter-final stage. The brief on Thiaw was explicit: keep the AFCON-winning system, change the dressing-room voice, navigate the cycle.

The senior spine of the AFCON 2021 winning side is mostly intact. Sadio Mané at 34 is the talisman, now playing his football in Saudi Arabia at Al-Nassr; the 2026 World Cup is his second tournament with the country and likely the first he features in for the full duration — he fractured his fibula two weeks before Qatar 2022 and watched it from a Senegalese hospital bed. Kalidou Koulibaly at 34 anchors a back-line that lost only once in CAF qualifying. Édouard Mendy, also Saudi-based at Al-Ahli, remains the first-choice goalkeeper. The midfield around Idrissa Gueye is the structural rebuild — the next generation, the post-Mané creative ten. Iliman Ndiaye, the Everton-based midfielder, has been the player Thiaw has trusted with playmaking duties; Nicolas Jackson at Chelsea is the back-up forward whose direct running gives Senegal a tactical option Mané no longer provides.

Group I is one of the harder draws in the tournament. France is the eight-time finalist who happens to share decades of post-colonial history with Senegal; the 2002 World Cup opener, when Senegal beat France 1-0 in Seoul on the day Papa Bouba Diop danced, is the most-rewatched football match in Senegalese television history. The 2026 rematch is structurally the country's most-anticipated single event of the calendar year. Norway is Erling Haaland's first World Cup; Iraq are the intercontinental playoff winner. None of the three is a free hit. The route through the round of 16 is real, but it requires either beating France or out-finishing Norway in the group — and the prize beyond is, this time, the structural test of whether the AFCON 2021 generation has one knockout-stage performance left.

Ivory Coast arrive at the 2026 World Cup as the reigning African champion in the most uncategorisable way available — defending champions of a tournament they nearly didn't survive the group stage of, managed by a coach promoted into the job after a 4-0 home-soil defeat in that group stage. The AFCON 2023 title is one of football's most chaotic narratives. Hosts Ivory Coast lost their second group match 4-0 to Equatorial Guinea (Emilio Nsue scored a hat-trick), sacked head coach Jean-Louis Gasset, promoted assistant Emerse Faé to interim, and qualified for the round of 16 only on the best-third-place tiebreaker.

What followed was one of the most improbable knockout runs ever assembled. Ivory Coast won every match by a one-goal margin: Senegal 1-1 (5-4 pens) in the round of 16, Mali 2-1 in extra time, DR Congo 1-0 in the semi-final, and Nigeria 2-1 in the final — Sébastien Haller scoring the winner in the 81st minute, eighteen months after his testicular cancer diagnosis. Faé was confirmed permanent two days after the final. The squad that lifted that trophy is, in essence, the squad that arrives in North America. Simon Adingra at Brighton emerged as the breakthrough name — direct, two-footed, the wide attacker around whom the team's offensive shape is now organised. Franck Kessié in Saudi Arabia at Al-Ahli remains the deep midfield voice — one of only two AFCON 2015 winners (the Yaya Touré-led team) still likely to start at this World Cup. Évan Ndicka at AS Roma is the left-sided ball-playing centre-back. Haller, now playing his football back in the Netherlands, remains the senior attacking presence whose place in the squad is its own narrative.

Group E is the hardest non-pot-1 draw in the tournament. Germany under Julian Nagelsmann is the seeded test. Ecuador are a serious pot-2 piece — the Caicedo, Hincapié, and Páez generation, the deepest CV any Ecuadorian squad has ever assembled. Curaçao, the smallest nation by population ever to qualify for a World Cup, are the pot-4 underdog with nothing to lose. A genuine three-way fight for second place. Ivory Coast's tournament turns on whether the AFCON 2023 magic — comebacks from impossible positions, one-goal margins in every knockout — was a once-in-a-generation tournament arc or, this time, a structural style they can repeat under pressure. Three previous World Cup appearances (2006, 2010, 2014) all ended in the group stage. The bar is the round of 16.