Season: 2022

Australia

Pedigree It’s a fifth World Cup in a row for the team that insists on calling itself the Socceroos, though Australia did it the hard way by winning two playoffs — against the United Arab Emirates and then Peru — after failing to qualify for one of the four automatic slots from Asia.

Ambition Australia may now be a mainstay of the World Cup, but it has not actually won a game at the tournament since 2010. Changing that record is the bare minimum for Coach Graham Arnold. Reaching the knockout rounds, given the group draw, is likely to be a step too far.

Key Question Much of the focus, when Arnold named his squad, was on the omission of two of the country’s longstanding stalwarts, Trent Sainsbury and Tom Rogic. Far more intriguing, though, was the inclusion of Garang Kuol, an 18-year-old with one cap to his name and a move to Newcastle United looming. He has already been cast as Australia’s next star.

France

Pedigree France is the reigning champion and, for all the romance attached to Brazil and Argentina, the presumptive favorite. No team has retained the World Cup since 1962, but the sheer depth of talent available to Didier Deschamps gives France every reason to believe it can end that run.

The Missing Deschamps has called up 11 of the players who won the World Cup in Russia, but not Paul Pogba or N’Golo Kanté, both of whom have been ruled out by injury. That leaves Deschamps with the unwanted challenge of crafting a whole new midfield on the fly.

Key Question So rich are France’s playing resources that it has long seemed like the country could send two squads (at least) to the World Cup, and both would rank among the favorites. Pogba and Kanté absences provide a chance to see if that theory can survive contact with reality.

Mexico

Pedigree For all the fretting over the United States’ path to Qatar, it was Mexico — ordinarily a shoo-in for the top spot in Concacaf — that made heavy weather of qualification. Gerardo Martino’s team failed to beat either the U.S. or Canada, home or away, and those failures followed Mexico’s losing both the Nations League and the Gold Cup to its northern neighbor.

Ambition Anything, really, that is not elimination in the round of 16. That has been Mexico’s fate in each of the last seven tournaments. Martino’s task is to ensure there is not an eighth. Ideally, he would do that by making the quarterfinals, not by being eliminated in the group stage.

Key Question Much will ride on the outcome of Mexico’s meeting with Poland, a game that had the air of a straight shootout almost as soon as the draw was made. In Hirving Lozano, Edson Álvarez and Raúl Jimenez, Mexico has the talent. Its nerve will be tested.

Saudi Arabia

Pedigree Qualification might have been a breeze for Coach Hervé Renard’s team, but Saudi Arabia’s reputation as one of Asia’s powerhouses is in flux. While it won its first game at a World Cup finals for 20 years in 2018, that came after missing out on both 2010 and 2014. The Saudis have not even made the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup since 2007.

Ambition The canny, experienced and open-neck-shirted Renard is a smart appointment for a country that has to make the most of a squad drawn exclusively from its domestic league. The sense remains, though, that departing the tournament with a better record than Qatar is all that matters.

Key Question There are only two teams in the tournament without a single player in a major European league: the host nation and Saudi Arabia. Received wisdom would make that an insurmountable obstacle to winning a game, let alone qualifying for the last 16. Saudi Arabia must disprove it.

Iran

Pedigree Iran has missed only two World Cups since 1998, establishing itself as one of Asia’s four great powers. It has never made it past the group stage, winning only two of its 15 games, but this iteration has realistic ambitions of ending that hoodoo, thanks largely to its attacking pair of Sardar Azmoun and Mehdi Taremi.

The Coach The well-traveled Portuguese coach Carlos Queiroz returned earlier this year after the dismissal of Dragan Skocic, the Serbian who had masterminded Iran’s qualification. Queiroz oversaw Iran’s World Cup campaigns in 2014 and 2018. This time, he is confident he can get the country to the knockout stage

Poland

Ambition Poland will have set its sights on beating Mexico to second place in the group — or taking advantage of any jitters that set in among Argentina’s players — and getting to the knockout stage for the first time since 1986.

The Story Robert Lewandowski is to Poland what Messi is to Argentina. No matter what order he eats his meals in, this will likely be his last World Cup, too. For the first time — thanks to the emergence of Piotr Zielinski and Nicola Zalewski — it is possible to believe he has a worthy supporting cast.

Key Question Coach Czeslaw Michniewicz faces the same question that has dogged all of his predecessors over the last decade or so: Is there a way to fashion a team that allows Lewandowski to shine? Poland has the finest pure striker in the world. The issue has always been finding a way to let him show it.

Wales

Pedigree Wales has waited 64 years for this moment. The country had not qualified for a World Cup since 1958, but it has been on the rise for the better part of a decade, reaching the semifinals of the European Championship in 2016 and then returning to the tournament five years later.

The Last Hurrah The two key figures in Wales’s renaissance, Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, are both unquestionably in the autumn of their careers, seeing out their time at Los Angeles F.C. and Nice, respectively. Below them, there are green shoots, including the likes of Brennan Johnson and Neco Williams, but for now everything still hinges on the veterans.

Key Question Bale’s decision to move to L.A.F.C. in M.L.S. this summer was seen as an attempt to guarantee his fitness for the World Cup. It has not quite worked like that — he was absent far more than the club anticipated — but he did sub on and score a crucial equalizer in the M.L.S. Cup final. Wales will hope Bale has a few more flashbulb moments left.

United States

Pedigree After an untimely intermission, the United States is back. The humiliating failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament — after an unbroken streak stretching back to 1990 — means that Coach Gregg Berhalter’s team has almost no experience of playing at a World Cup. Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen.

Ambition What the U.S. lacks in international experience, this generation of players makes up for in exposure to Europe’s major leagues (and, indeed, the Champions League). Christian Pulisic might be the golden boy, but the likes of Tyler Adams, Brenden Aaronson and Gio Reyna have all earned their spurs. A place in the last 16 should be feasible.

Key Question The most obvious concern is who, exactly, will score. A more pressing inquiry might be whether Berhalter’s decision to give youth its day is prioritizing the future at the expense of the present. The U.S. will be among the youngest teams at the World Cup. The hope may be that pays dividends on home soil in 2026.

England

Ambition England has been building to this tournament off the field for almost a decade: The Football Association set winning the 2022 World Cup as a target as long ago as 2013. That has long since been disregarded as policy, but in practice England should be a contender. It reached the semifinals in 2018 and made the final of the European Championship in 2021. Its time is coming.

The Surprise Over the last year, Manager Gareth Southgate has been accused of being too loyal — mainly to Harry Maguire — and not loyal enough, principally to Trent Alexander-Arnold. Both are on the team this time, but the real surprise was the inclusion of James Maddison, the Leicester City playmaker who has been studiously ignored for most of Southgate’s tenure.

Key Question The suspicion, in England, is that Southgate is too cautious to make use of a talented generation of attacking players, and that England’s dreams will be undone by a lack of either ambition or self-confidence. He must weigh the rewards of cutting loose against the risk of exposing his team’s vulnerabilities.

The Netherlands

Pedigree As a rule, the Dutch tend to do pretty well when they get to international tournaments these days. Getting there has proved to be the hard part: After reaching the final in 2010 and the semifinals in 2014, the Netherlands was not even present in Russia four years ago. Coach Louis van Gaal’s team is trying to make up for lost time.

Ambition Van Gaal was in charge in 2014, too, when his tactical acumen managed to take a far less well-equipped squad within a penalty shootout of reaching a second final in four years. This time, he has a defense built around Virgil van Dijk and a midfield orchestrated by Frenkie de Jong. And he is Louis van Gaal, so he will see no reason that he cannot win the whole thing.

Key Question The players left behind — Sven Botman, Ryan Gravenberch, Arnaut Danjuma — indicate the quality of the Dutch squad. If there is a weakness, it is up front, where Memphis Depay remains the only proven scorer. It would be a good time for Cody Gakpo, the PSV Eindhoven sensation, to come good on his promise.