2026 WC USA (et al): Worldwide Opponents Watch [all R's]

Costa Rica and Honduras

 

Absolutely stunning qualifiers tonight.

Just woke up and Curacao and Haiti qualified get in! So happy for them both. Curacao is smaller population wise than Poole/Bournemouth where I live (AFCB fan) and Haiti after everything they go through is unbelievable.

 

I sometimes think its hard to be a USMNT fan. You get your hopes up and then always hit a wall.

And then I remember that there are Jamaica fans out there.
They've GOT to be the most underachieving federation on the planet.
Their fans suffer in a way USMNT fans rarely do. They have a Couva-level disappointment with astonishing frequency.

How can this federation make Jamaica fans suffer even more? Have them go thru this inter-federation playoff. Just prolong the agony. They'll probably win the opening match and then lose in some horrible, soul-sucking way at the last hurdle.

Oh, and imagine your coach quitting on you right before your final playoff.
Steve McClaren quits Jamaica job 'in tears'

"And tonight, I best serve this team by stepping aside and allowing someone else to take this team forward."

 

Curaçao had no one on the roster this window who was born or raised in the country. Not sure why their current population is super relevant.

 

Yeah I was going to say it's awesome that they qualified but I think this whole "smallest nation eer to qualify" needs an asterisk on it as there isn't really a "nation" Curacao, and from what I see none of the players are really representative of the 158,000 inhabitants there. There's no Curacao passport as far as I know, so it's practically a bunch of Dutch born and bred players with some sort of Curacaoan lineage. It's still a remarkable achievement to qualify but not really the same as Iceland o Trinidad or someone like Bahrain for instance qualifying...

 

Still. The domestic federation still has lay the foundation and do the work. They've made some outstanding coaching hires.

Curacao has been doing good work for a while without getting over any big hurdles. Now they have.

The USMNT has only faced Curacao once. At the 2019 Gold Cup we beat them only 1-0.

Meanwhile we've faced Jamaica 35 times!! [Only lost 3 of the 35.]

 

Yes the federation is certainly doing an excellent job. That should be celebrated. But it should be recognized that it’s a team of Dutch duals and that’s hidden when folks talk about Curaçao’s population.

 

Blame imperialism. Maybe a country trying to conquer land had it's benefits centuries later.

 

Sure. This is the way of world soccer now, though.

Talk to Morocco.........................

Jamaica does the same thing with its diaspora. Leon Bailey turning his back on them hurt. He's a potential difference maker.

 

Technically FIFA hasn’t actually issued the regulations yet and can do it a different way like for instance

Fifa hasn't published the regulations yet, and it could choose to seed each playoff path by the highest-ranked team.

That would mean, for instance, the Uefa paths of Italy and Denmark would be in Pot 2.

For the 2022 World Cup, the playoff paths all went into Pot 4. https://t.co/nsDyXDZhx2

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) November 19, 2025

But having the playoff winners in Pot 4 would be consistent with how they’ve done it previously.

 

Going off of the projected pots here:
https://www.nbcsports.com/soccer/ne...-draw-confirmed-pots-predictions-how-it-works

Best case scenario - Austria, Qatar, New Zealand
Worst case scenario - Morocco, Norway, Italy (Colombia and Japan are probably tougher teams than Morocco on paper, but between their performance last time and how badly they've had our number at youth level keep us far away from them)

 

Kinda proud of myself. I totally nailed everything in our confederation except our friendly result (lost U 0.5, 1.5, 3.5 and 4.5 bets lol).
Jamaica would choke at home/it being SO JAMAICA to do so: Check
Navas wouldn't let Costa Rica lose in his last home game (probably), giving Haiti an opening to take the group: Check
Panama would advance as group winner pretty easily: Check.
Suriname would run into trouble at Guatemala (Guatemala being an underdog was bizarre to me: Check.

I think Costa Rica, Honduras, and Jamaica have indeed confirmed that the traditional tier 2 of Concacrap is indeed hot garbage. I think, maybe, Honduras has some hope next cycle. Their youth teams have shown signs of bubbling up into decent form since 2021 at least. I also think a cycle with El Tri, Canada, and the US will actually help them to qualify as they all perform pretty consistently better against the big dogs, than Curacao, Haiti, Suriname etc do. We'll see if I'm wrong about that. Oddly, I think none of the 3 big dogs probably hurt Costa Rica and Honduras and maybe Jamaica this cycle, more than it helped.

 

Another interesting wrinkle for Bolivia...one of the 2 potential playoff venues is in Guadalajara which is over 5000 feet above sea level..not exactly La Paz but still high enough to cause issues for teams unaccustomed to altitude (very close to Denver), whereas the Bolivian themselves will feel supercharged coming down over 6k feet.

All 3 of Bolivia's potential first round opponents are island nations. If I'm the Reggae Boyz or even one if the 2 seeded teams, I want no part of them.

 

It's different than the UAE naturalizing dudes who have zero connection to UAE Culturally, and then run them out in 8 or 9 of the starting 11. I believe all the Curacao players culturally have heritage traced back to Curacao (parent(s) or grandparent(s) or both), and indeed most, hell maybe all, would be Caribbean born, if not for the age of exploration/imperialism European powers like the Dutch indulged in for hundreds of years until typically the late 19th to mid 20th century. Most of the players are in the Netherlands because their parents or grandparents left Curacao for better opportunities post WWII. So for me, cultural ties with that truth are strong.

To me that's fundamentally different than importing Argentine and Brazilian players never quite good enough for their national team, paying them for club play, but in truth simply to stick around long enough to naturalize, so you (UAE) can oust a 100% Iraqi born National Team, from a chance to qualify for the WC.

So I credit Curacao, but not UAE, may seem like nit picking. But I don't think the two cases are remotely similar (not that anyone was saying they were, but discounting what Curacao has done, isn't really fair when you consider the heritage angle, but understandable since the headlines are misleading (making people assume somehow they found 26 out of 156,000 capable of qualifying for a WC, when the pop # to be accurate would include people born from the Curacao diaspora, which is what the team is largely built from).

 

Curacao outplayed us in that game too, it was a part of the "Wtf Berhalter June/July hellscape performances (losing to Jamaica, and Venezuela and barely escaping Curacao, all at home).

 

One caveat on my slamming of the old tier 2 teams:

Group C was actually more hyper competitive than pathetic:
Haiti beat Costa Rica at home and tied them away
Honduras beat Haiti at home, and tied them away.
Costa Rica and Honduras tied one another home and away.

What the group came down to in the end, was actually what everyone was able to do in their home and home with 4th place Nicarauga.

Haiti beat them 2-0 at home, and 3-0 away.
Honduras beat them 2-0 at home, but lost to them 0-2 away.
Costa Rica beat them 4-1 at home, but drew them away.

So Hait collected 6 points
Costa Rica collected 4 points.
Honduras collected just 3 points.

That proved decisive once you added that to the round robin between the 3 teams in home and home's.

I do think Honduras looks set to pass Costa Rica this next cycle and I'll be curious how it plays. Honduras has made runs in recent U20's while Costa Rica has really fallen off, generally the U20's have been a good arbiter of how the second and third tier are doing in terms of player development and golden generation potential. Costa Rica has pretty much stunk for more than a decade, Honduras has been improving, same with island nations like DR, and Cuba. Will be interesting to watch going forward.

 

You a Lowkey fan of Honduras? You Lowkey Honduran? I share significantly less optimism about my country than you do.

 

Costa Rica looked like they were on the comeback after a solid performance in the Nations League (despite losing a close quarterfinal series to their nemesis Panama) and Gold Cup (despite losing on penalties to the USMNT in the quarterfinal).

We all thought Miguel Herrera was the right man for the job and would lead them to the World Cup. No dice.

Mexico is playing like garbage now too. Is Javier Aguirre going to hold onto his job? Alarm bells are going off! They haven't won a game since July 6th.
The Mexican national team has earned the boos: They have not won since the Gold Cup | Marca

As shocking as it is to say after the last several years, all of a sudden its the US trending in the right direction half a year before the World Cup.

 

My expert analysis of Los Ticos was that after Gustavo Alfaro bailed on CR for Paraguay after Copa America, they were never the same team again this cycle. Miguel Herrera never found a rhythm with Costa Rica and seemed to be constantly trying to shuffle his deck in the hopes of finding some sort of spark to salvage the campaign. Alfaro was the one who initiated the new generation of Madrigal, Jeyland, Rojas, etc.. While Herrera as Qualifiers wore on hung his job on the revival of the fading generation of Joel Campbell, Kendall Waston and Celso Borges...

I think they're in for a rough cycle coming up just because they'll be introducing a new generation entirely. They have some pieces like Ugalde and Alcocer, but it seems a far cry of what they previously had in Saborio, Ruiz, Myrie, etc.

 

On a similar note, Panama is here to stay. We're witnessing a new contender consolidate itself within the region with another World Cup berth. They seem to have a plan of action across all levels of their men's teams. It might be a top 3 to a top 4 soon in CONCACAF.

 

Yeah, I saw a comment from somebody calling Panama the "best of the rest."

That's unfair to Panama based on their results for several years now.

In the FIFA rankings they're extremely close to Canada on points.
Canada is in 27th place and Panama is in 30th and gaining.

In the ELO rankings, the USMNT is in 34th and Panama is in 35th.
That's disturbingly tight. [In the last CONCACAF rankings index, Panama was ahead of the USMNT.]

Its time for Panama to actually win something, though. Time for them to not make the semifinals all the time and an occasional final. Time for them to win something.

 

I don't think they're there yet, depth wise. They looked pretty mediocre in midfield when they were missing Coco Carrasquilla, but they didn't have Murillo this window and looked good, so who knows. My hunch is once they add quality depth, it's going to be rough for everyone.

They have a young striker at Botafogo who looks the real deal.

 

Dominican Republic is my sleeper to watch for the 2030 cycle.

 

Nicaragua might be mines. Average age of 25 when their oldest player was subbed out(Barrera/Mejia iirc) and they all play together. Figueroa said the next coach will have something to work with for 2030. Bancy Hernandez and Coronel look like pillars for their next cycle.

Can't wait, literally..I'm getting older

 

Here are your updated World Cup draw pots after Concacaf World Cup qualifying completed. pic.twitter.com/gMdIzLGhxi

— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) November 19, 2025

What's the toughest possible draw here... Colombia, Norway/Scotland, Ghana, maybe? I don't know the most of the Pot 3/4 teams all that well, just making a guesstimation.

Obviously once all are in it's probably UEFA from 4, and someone else from 3...Egypt?