Why football has lost its ability to surprise at the World Cup

It was supposed to be the World Cup of unknown nations, but it turned into the World Cup of football’s superstars. Whilst the main aim of the first 48-team World Cup was to open the tournament up to a greater number of national teams, what ultimately remains is the absolute dominance of the top goalscorers. One statistic says it all: six players scored more than six goals – something that has never happened in previous tournaments – and none of them were, really, an unexpected name. Mbappé, Messi, Bellingham, Haaland, Dembélé and Kane are extraordinary talents, but they were already so before this World Cup. We can venture to say that this World Cup will not define their sporting destinies. And even if we run through the squad of the winning Spanish side, it’s hard to come across a name that wasn’t already familiar to football fans.

With the 2026 World Cup, we must therefore bid farewell to an effect that the World Cup has often had throughout its history: the power to shape collective memory. For the history of this competition has always been a meeting point between the stars – Pelé, Maradona, Baggio, Ronaldo, Beckenbauer, Zidane – and the one-off heroes, those players who have managed to make their mark at the World Cup, defying the odds and carving out a significant place for themselves in the tournament’s annals.

In Italy, we’ve had three striking examples of names that have won a place in our hearts thanks to the World Cup. Fabio Grosso became a folk hero, even without being a star: he was at the heart of the decisive moments of the 2006 World Cup – winning a penalty against Australia in the round of 16, scoring in the semi-final against Germany, and scoring the decisive penalty against France – yet he came from Palermo and had only a handful of European matches under his belt. The story of Salvatore Schillaci is no different; he was the unexpected hero of the ‘Magical Nights’ of Italia ’90: he topped the scoring charts in a tournament where he had started out as a substitute for Vialli and Carnevale, just 12 months after leaving Messina in Serie B to join Juventus. Finally, Paolo Rossi: called up amid controversy for Spain ’82, he was coming off a very long ban for match-fixing, played poorly in the early stages of the tournament, but then came into his own and topped the goalscoring charts. He was already an established talent – he’d had an excellent World Cup at Argentina ’78 – but with that World Cup he even managed to turn his career around.

Stories like this would perhaps be unthinkable today. Just like that of Just Fontaine, who arrived at the 1958 World Cup as Reims’ star striker and managed to score no fewer than 13 goals, setting an all-time record that still stands today. Or Oleg Salenko, a one-off phenomenon: six goals at USA ’94 – five of them against Cameroon – earned him the title of joint top scorer alongside Stoichkov (who went on to win the Ballon d’Or), making him the only World Cup top scorer never to have progressed beyond the group stage. Then there was Gary Lineker’s breakthrough at Mexico ’86. He was England’s top scorer domestically but had never played in international competitions – due to the exclusion of English clubs from UEFA competitions following the Heysel disaster – yet he dominated the tournament and went on to move from Everton to Barcelona. We could go on with Davor Suker, Miroslav Klose and Roger Milla: players who perhaps built the most decisive part of their own legends at the World Cup.

Why is this happening less and less? Behind the undoubted growth of the spectacle and the game, we are in fact creating an increasingly predictable game of football. The World Cup, which is supposed to represent the very best of football, is in reality being swallowed up by this trend. The last edition was, in this sense, emblematic: the number of teams involved has increased, and with it the number of matches. There was a very high average number of goals per match – 2.96, a figure not seen since the 1970 World Cup – but ultimately the number of upsets was very limited – Paraguay, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Egypt – and none ever made it past the round of 16. No one had ever deluded themselves that the opposite would happen: the system gives the smaller teams a chance to shine, but ultimately rewards the stronger sides – and, with them, their goalscorers. This trend is no different from what happens in the Champions League or the major European leagues.

Then there is a broader consideration affecting the entire system, which is increasingly in the media spotlight and analysed using data and statistics. And the lesser leagues, by now, are being scrutinised more and more closely. It is perhaps now impossible for a footballer to reach the World Cup as an unknown: a modern-day Roger Milla would already have been featured for several years on Instagram videos or in scouting databases; a contemporary Salenko would be unlikely to still be playing for a lower-league Spanish side, as was the case with the Russian at the time, who arrived from Logroñés and had only two caps for the Russian national team to his name.

It is the paradox of a World Cup that has never been so global, reaching every corner of the planet, yet increasingly lacking one of its oldest charms: the ability to surprise. The stars continue to shine, perhaps more brightly than ever. But they already belong to the firmament. The Schillacis, the Grossos and the Salenkos, on the other hand, were comets. And the World Cup was the place where they would suddenly appear.