Three Asian sides
with a knockout case. The AFC's three deepest squads.

Japan arrive at the 2026 World Cup as the most coherent footballing project in Asia and as the team that, at Qatar 2022, beat both Germany 2-1 and Spain 2-1 in the group stage before losing to Croatia on penalties in the round of 16. Hajime Moriyasu, the head coach who orchestrated that run, was kept on by the federation for the 2026 cycle — a decision that looks, three years later, like the kind of long-horizon thinking that has separated Japanese football from its AFC competition for two decades.

The squad now runs almost entirely through European clubs. Wataru Endo at Liverpool is the captain and the deep-midfield screen. Takefusa Kubo at Real Sociedad is the right-side creator. Kaoru Mitoma at Brighton is the left-side dribbler. Daichi Kamada has played his football in Italy and Germany. Junya Itō has carried the right-flank. The full back-line is a top-five-league rotation. The 3-4-2-1 Moriyasu has used since 2022 has been retuned slightly — more vertical, more comfortable in possession, less dependent on a single set-piece routine — but the structure is the same one that ended the campaigns of two European pot-1 sides three years ago.

The AFC Asian Cup 2023, held in Qatar in January and February 2024, was Japan's only meaningful interruption. They went out 2-1 to Iran in the quarter-final, Alireza Jahanbakhsh scoring the winner — a result Moriyasu acknowledged but did not let dictate selection through the rest of the cycle. Group F at the 2026 World Cup pairs Japan with the Netherlands, Sweden, and Tunisia. The Netherlands are the seeded test, Sweden are the pot-4 entrant with Alexander Isak (and the late playoff-route qualification through Path B), Tunisia are the workmanlike African presence. Japan are favoured to finish second, which puts them on the round of 16 path that has, every previous World Cup, been the line at which they stop.

Iran arrive at their seventh World Cup with the deepest forward line of any AFC nation in the tournament. Mehdi Taremi moved from FC Porto to Inter Milan on a free transfer in summer 2024 — the first time an AFC striker has been a regular at a Serie A club competing in the Champions League knockout stages since the early-2000s era of South Korean Park Ji-sung at Manchester United. Sardar Azmoun, Karim Ansarifard, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, and Mehdi Ghayedi round out a forward and attacking-midfield bank that is, by any AFC-comparative measure, the strongest in the region.

Amir Ghalenoei was appointed head coach in March 2023, replacing Carlos Queiroz after the Portuguese coach's second stint ended following the Qatar 2022 group-stage exit (a 1-0 defeat to the United States that Iran needed only a draw from). Ghalenoei is a continuity hire — long-time Persian Gulf Pro League coach, multiple Iranian Premier League titles with Sepahan, the kind of internal name the federation has historically defaulted to when Queiroz cycles end. The Asian Cup 2023 run took Iran to the semi-final, where they lost 3-2 to eventual champions Qatar in one of the tournament's most controversial late-decision matches.

Group G at the 2026 World Cup is winnable: Belgium is the seeded test (with Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku at Napoli together for the first time at international level), Egypt is the experienced pot-2 piece (Mohamed Salah's last cycle, almost certainly), New Zealand the pot-4 underdog. Iran have appeared at six previous World Cups and never advanced past the group stage. The 2026 tournament is structurally the best knockout opportunity the country has had — a group where two of the three opponents are managing senior players at the end of their international careers, and a Taremi at the very peak of his.

South Korea arrive at the 2026 World Cup in their second post-Jürgen Klinsmann tournament cycle, with Hong Myung-bo back in the head coach role he held when Korea were eliminated in the 2014 World Cup group stage. The Klinsmann era ended in February 2024 after Korea lost the AFC Asian Cup 2023 semi-final 2-0 to Jordan — the heaviest knockout-stage upset of the tournament and the result that ended the German's fifteen-month tenure. Hong was appointed in July 2024 and his re-hire has been the most-debated single decision in modern Korean football, given the trajectory of his first stint.

The squad itself is the strongest the country has put together since the post-2002 generation. Son Heung-min, 33 at the start of the tournament, remains Tottenham's captain and the talisman the entire selection is organised around — almost certainly his last World Cup. Lee Kang-in at PSG is the next-generation playmaker (joined the club from Mallorca in summer 2023); Kim Min-jae at Bayern Munich is the centre-back the back-line is built around; Hwang Hee-chan at Wolves is the second-striker option. The midfield has been retuned under Hong toward more physicality and less possession — a deliberate departure from the Klinsmann project that was widely judged to have favoured veteran reputations over tactical structure.

Group A at the 2026 World Cup opens for South Korea on 11 June against Mexico at Estadio Azteca — the tournament's opening match. Czechia (UEFA Path D playoff winner, beating Denmark on pens) is the pot-3 European piece; South Africa is the pot-4 entrant. The route to the round of 16 is genuinely available: Korea will be favoured for second place behind Mexico, and the bracket beyond gives them a credible run depending on the Group B winner. The tournament turns, as Korea's every World Cup since 2002 has, on whether they can win a single-game knockout against a top-eight nation when the format demands it.