Recently I am following few teams which are doing good job and have good chance of going through into this event as outsider Morocco and Japan are teams to watch for surprises with few top teams are now heading for end of their glory days.
These two countries are countries that must be watched, and both are successful in their respective continents. Japan always gets positive results and they are also undefeated in the third round of the World Cup. I also agree about several big countries that are in a decline phase, so it's time for non-seeded countries to be able to develop and compete with other big teams.
Indeed, I think Morocco and Japan will be able to talk a lot in the upcoming 2026 World Cup. Both countries currently have a golden generation, and the majority of them play in top European clubs, so they are must definitely teams to watch. We certainly still remember Morocco journey in the 2022 World Cup, where they were able to reach the semi-finals before finally losing to France. This could happen again, especially if the performance of countries that usually appear dominant continues to decline, such as Italy, Belgium and Brazil. Personally, I hope to see Asian and African countries become more dominant forces in the World Cup in the future.