It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut. You can read all of our previews here.
You're watching to see if Cristiano Ronaldo at age 41 is still worth watching. You know you are. You're trying to force-feed a LeBron James comparison into your cerebral cortex because you know what happened in the past, but have no idea about the future except that 41-year-olds are unreliable predictors. So you make up reasons why Portugal's chances at a deep run are dependent upon Ronaldo's résumé, when in fact we won't see Portugal's true mettle as the fifth-rated team in this tournament until they have escaped a deeply rudimentary group with Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uzbekistan. Historically, Colombia is a formidable knockout stage team, though it missed out entirely in 2022. Uzbekistan is at its first Mundial ever and the DRC has only made one, in 1974 when the country was known as Zaire, and lost all three matches. President Mobutu Sese Seko offered to jail them all when they returned. So that's fun. Against this field, we will learn little, but your Ronaldo fixation will be dealt with next month, so be patient.