It’s the World Cup, but functionally, it’s always been Europe and South America’s tournament. All 22 World Cup winners and all 44 World Cup finalists have come from those two continents. Entering the 2026 World Cup, South American teams had more wins (185) than all Africa, North America, Asia, and Oceania combined (97) … and Europe has twice as many as South America (468.) Both South America and Europe have won more than 50 percent of their games; the other continents have all won less than 25 percent.

This time: nine out of ten African teams made it to the Round of 32. Let’s celebrate them all: Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Egypt, DR Congo, Cape Verde, Algeria, and South Africa. The final six of those nations are in the knockout stages for the first time. (The South Africans lost their Round of 32 game to Canada on Sunday, but we’re still recognizing them.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: So many teams got through because they expanded the tournament! It’s a Round of 32 now, not a Round of 16! And yes, that’s true. But African teams advanced to the Round of 32 at a higher rate (90 percent) than any other continent, including South America (5 of 6, 83.3 percent) and Europe (13 out of 16, 81.3 percent).

Africa was historically allotted 5 slots in the 32-team World Cup field. They now have nine teams in the Round of 32, almost double what FIFA had decided they deserved in past tournaments.

Some African teams were Cinderella stories. DR Congo, playing in their first World Cup in 52 years, won their first game at a World Cup to clinch a spot in the Round of 32, rallying back from an early deficit against Uzbekistan and scoring two late goals to win 3-1.

And of course, our beloved Cape Verde, everybody’s new favorite archipelago. (Sorry, Hawai’i, you’ve been bumped!) The third-smallest country in World Cup history is now the smallest country ever to qualify for the knockout rounds of the World Cup. Goalkeeper Vozinha is now up to 17 million Instagram followers, more than 30 times more than the population of his own country.

(He’d better start pumping out some good content! Where are the reels, my guy?)

You’ve gotta feel kinda bad for Tunisia. All these posts about how well African teams are performing and they got outscored 12-2 in three games and sent home. Carthago really got Delenda-ed.

But we shouldn’t portray every African team as an underdog. Remember: Morocco reached the semis last time. They played up to Brazil and finished their group with two wins and a draw. Cote D’Ivoire beat Ecuador and was a 95th-minute goal away from a draw against Germany. Egypt is actually favored in their Round of 32 game against Australia.

Is an African team going to win the tournament? Probably not. But I think it’s fair to say that Africa deserves more than 9 bids in a 48-team World Cup. Consider that Nigeria, which has finished top three at the last two African Cup of Nations tournaments, didn’t qualify for the World Cup. Neither did Cameroon, which beat Brazil at the 2022 World Cup and was a quarterfinalist at the last AFCON.

The Asian confederation, which only got two of nine teams into the knockout rounds, feels significantly overrepresented at the World Cup. North America got an additional three slots in this year’s tournament and those teams (Panama, Curaçao, and Haiti) combined for one draw and eight losses in nine games. (And that draw was a borderline miracle.)

The way the soccer world has talked about African soccer has long been dismissive and disrespectful. In 2018, Zito Madu wrote about how many commentators described Senegal as winning a match against Poland due to their physicality and speed when their actual performance had been a display of technique and tactics. A 2020 study showed that soccer commentators are far more likely to praise the physicality of darker-skinned players and the intelligence of lighter-skinned players.

Even last week, German soccer legend Bastian Schweinsteiger said on TV while commentating a Cote D’Ivoire match that “African football … (is) a bit wild, a bit unorthodox and perhaps not so conditioned by tactics.”

Think about how ridiculous a statement that is: “African football” refers to more than than 50 teams, from countries varying in size, wealth, culture, geography, language, ethnicity, history — and soccer. You think all of them are “wild” and “unorthodox?” We’d never talk so monolithically about Europe.

I wanted to celebrate the unprecedented success of African teams in this World Cup, but even so, I feel like I’m doing these nations a disservice by lumping them together. These teams have different strengths and styles, and as they go deeper into the tournament than they’ve ever gone before, they’ve earned the right to tell their own unique stories.

From the beginning, it was clear these teams were going for it. Both teams played aggressively from the start, with Austria scoring first in the 29th minute and Algeria answering back before halftime.

After about 80 minutes, though, it felt like the teams understood the situation. The two teams had earnestly tried their sporting best to win, and legitimately equalled each other. They both deserved their spot in the next round. At this point, with spots in the next round guaranteed, it would be true madness to try scoring and risk getting sloppy at the back and getting eliminated.

In Algeria’s case, scoring would actually get them a harder opponent. The smart move was to chill out and take the tie. They passed the ball back-and-forth to each other, showing no intent to score, for minutes on end.

AND THEN.

For no apparent reason, Algeria had rope-a-doped Austria and killed them off with a last-minute surprise attack. After more than five minutes of aimless back-and-forth passing with no intent to score, they’d suddenly surged and sprung free Riyad Mahrez, the country’s all-time greatest goalscorer, in the final minute of stoppage time to win a game they hadn’t needed to win, leaving Austria almost no time to counter.

Here’s a (thankfully, sped-up) video of Algeria’s 5-plus minutes of uninterrupted passing before the goal. The brand-new Futi app has an incredible visualization of the 109-pass run-up to the goal. (Per FIFA, the previous record for the longest string of passes before a goal in World Cup history was 34.)

Beautiful sociopathy from Algeria. Totally unnecessary, no need for this. The soccer equivalent of the scorpion stinging the frog in the middle of the river and saying lmao. There was a perfectly fine deal with Austria and they broke it in the closing moments, even though it meant they would have to play SPAIN in the next round! Because SCREW YOU, YOU SCREWED OVER OUR GRANDPARENTS IN 1982! BERN IN HELL, AUS-HOLES!

…………….. AND THEN!!!!!!!

The vibes of the game had entirely shifted. After an extended period of time where neither team was really trying to score, Austria now mega-super-duper-needed to score, instantly.

They quickly subbed in 6-foot-7 Saša Kalajdžić, the tallest striker in the entire World Cup. Even though he hadn’t scored a goal for Austria since 2021, they needed every attacker ASAP. The ball found Kaladzic’s head in the 96th minute, un-eliminating themselves from the tournament.

It’s the first game in World Cup history where a go-ahead and an equalizing goal were both scored in stoppage time … and it happened in a game where we thought there wouldn’t be any action!

And after all that… a tie. There have only been seven 3-3 ties in World Cup history, including the 2022 final between France and Argentina. The exact result we expected, in a manner which nobody could have predicted.

Soccer, perhaps more than any other sport, provides constant reminders that watching a game will cause you to feel things you never could have felt if you had simply looked at the final score.

First off, there’s the way Iran’s game ended Friday night. It appeared like Iranian captain Mehdi Taremi had scored a goal in the 95th minute to give Iran a 2-1 victory, but the goal was wiped off the board due to an unusual, but correct, ruling.

If you were explaining to a casual fan what “offsides” is, you’d probably say something like: You can’t pass to a player if they’re behind the opponent’s last defender. But the rule is not actually about the “last” defender — according to the FIFA rulebook, it’s “the second-last opponent.” A player needs TWO defenders between them and the goal; It’s just that 99.9 percent of the time, one of the two defenders is the goalkeeper. On the Iran goal, the goalkeeper had removed himself from the play with a sloppy clearance attempt, so there was only one defender in between Taremi and the goal line.

Still: He was only off by a few inches, just the front half of his foot.

It’s the type of offsides that never would’ve been called prior to the advent of FIFA’s ridiculously advanced offsides technology which uses dozens of cameras to track every player’s body parts 50 times per second. (Literally, 50 times per second, not an exaggeration.) Nobody would have ever thought to look to see whether Taremi was offsides on this play, and nobody would have been able to discern his foot was a smidge farther than his opponents’ feet. (Notably, Fox officiating expert Dr. Joe Machnik spent the review discussing a potential handball call instead.)

And it wasn’t even the first time Iran was a smidge offsides. They appeared to have scored a game-winning goal in their group stage match against Belgium, too, but Taremi (again!) was off by a butt:

All told, Iran was a toe and a cheek away from winning two group stage games and finishing on top of their group with seven points. (Not to mention, Taremi missed a penalty against Egypt. The chances were there.)

But it wasn’t to be. They finished the tournament with three ties in three games. For a while, it looked like that was going to be good enough to make it through to the knockout stages.

After teams had played their first two group stage games, Michael Caley of Expecting Goals projected that a team with 3 points and a negative 3 goal differential would have better than a 50 percent shot of advancing to the knockout rounds; a team with an even goal differential like Iran would have a 97 percent chance. Iran had entered Saturday with a 92 percent chance of advancing to the Round of 32, according to The Athletic’s World Cup tracker.

But in group after group, third place teams won their final games of the group stage. Bosnia, DR Congo, Senegal, South Africa, and Ecuador all won win-and-in games to bump them off the cut line. If you hit that parlay, congrats on the new house. And Sweden, Paraguay, and of course, Algeria all tied to move from 3 to 4 points.

It’s worth noting FIFA’s format helped cause this. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about the freakin’ Disgrace of Gijón at this point, but after that match, FIFA started having teams in the same group play games at the same time to prevent mischief and strategic draws. But by adding in a format where teams from every group are competing against one another, it puts squads like Iran that played earlier than other groups at a disadvantage. Teams playing their final group stage games earlier in the week had no idea what it would take to get through; teams playing on Saturday night could cater their strategy to the situation.

They had to watch result after result after result come in, then watch Austria and Algeria seemingly come to an agreement to mutually draw, an agreement which seemed sure to knock Iran out of the tournament. They experienced the frustration of watching two teams do nothing for minute after minute, experienced the elation of watching Algeria apparently bail on that pact and take the lead … and then experienced a Muhammad Ali-level gut punch with that 96th-minute Austrian goal. Brutal.

And the elephant in the room: the Iranian team was subject to various restrictions that applied to no other team in the tournament, due to the ongoing war between the United States and Iran. Their team had to fly internationally before every game since they weren’t allowed to stay in the United States, they had to shift base camps from Arizona to Mexico, their support staff were denied visas to enter the country, and their allotment of tickets was revoked. (After threatening to file a complaint, they were allowed to fly to their final game two days early, on the same schedule as the other 47 teams.)

That can’t have helped them on the field. Would they have been a little sharper if they hadn’t had to jump through so many hoops? If they hadn’t had to spend the whole tournament advocating to be treated the same as all the other teams?

Whether through malice or bad luck, everything went wrong for Iran. But! They never lost a game at the World Cup. With all the forces working against them, they somehow remained unbeaten.