Eight nations have won the World Cup. An expanded field and a grueling schedule means a new champion could emerge from the pack this summer<\/p>\n
When Fifa expanded the field for the 2026 World Cup to 48 teams, the sales pitch included giving more nations a chance at glory. In reality, the favorites are nearly always former champions.<\/p>\n
To date, only eight nations have won the men\u2019s World Cup. And yet, few of the former champions arrive at this summer\u2019s tournament in their finest form. Spain are a justifiably popular pick as the reigning European champions have plenty of world-class talent. Argentina will hope to defend their title from 2022 after following it up with the Copa Am\u00e9rica in 2024. France, who top our power rankings<\/a>, have reached the last two finals, and Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 claims this squad is the best he has been a part of.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eight nations have won the World Cup. An expanded field and a grueling schedule means a new champion could emerge from the pack this summer When Fifa expanded the field for the 2026 World Cup to 48 teams, the sales pitch included giving more nations a chance at glory. In reality, the favorites are nearly … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}