The World Cup in Qatar it was a watershed (in my opinion)
I could never imagine that a country with Muslim traditions could host an event like the World Cup.
In 2026, I'm almost sure that several national teams will surprise the whole world.
Year after year, countries around the world are taking football seriously as a serious sport.
They are training more, some countries are investing in football and teaching young people and children to practice this sport.
In my life I would never have imagined that Morocco would be able to participate in a World Cup semi-final (I'm not putting it down, but that was something unbelievable)
Germany was easily eliminated and had a poor performance in the 2018 and 2022 cup.
Italy did not participate in the last world cups (2018-2022)
Croatia beating Brazil sensationally (2022)
I will be very curious to know how the 2026 world cup will be!
I have no doubt that we will have several surprises, and I am sure that several teams will be more prepared and evolved in relation to this last world cup that we had.
I don't understand why you think that a country with Muslim traditions could host a World Cup? I think you are confusing a few concepts here. Muslims can be extremely hyped for soccer. Look at the Turkish people and how passionate they are about the sport. I guess you are referring to the restrictive policies in Qatar and the violation of human rights and free speech. It is the Qatar interpretation of Muslim religion that made you think they couldn't host a World Cup I suppose?
I think Turkey, even though lots of things go wrong there as well, is still a Muslim country with almost 99% of the population being Muslim. Yet I would say that Turkey is quite different from Qatar or Saudi Arabia. They have secular tendencies that are more in harmony with the Western idea of free speech and equal rights for women and men. In Qatar people were afraid of women getting banned from the soccer games and also other forms of discrimination against them (clothing especially).
In general I think Muslims can be hardcore fans and Turkey is a good example for that. We should always try to allow countries host the World Cup throughout the whole world regardless of the dominating religion. In Qatar it wasn't about the religion, the concerns were about their fundamentalistic interpretation of the Muslim religion and the politicization of the event as a means to global positive fake recognition.