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The 2026 World Cup<\/a> is hurtling towards the knockout stages after 48 nations were split into 12 groups for the first time in the tournament\u2019s long history. <\/p>\n Co-hosts Mexico, USA and Canada are the top seeds in Groups A, B and D respectively, while Scotland are in Group C with Brazil, Morocco and Haiti, and England are all the way down in Group L with Croatia, Ghana and Panama.<\/p>\n The top two sides in each group will qualify for the World Cup\u2019s first ever round of 32, as will the eighth best third-place teams. Just three points could be enough for some teams to reach the knockout stages<\/a>. <\/p>\n There will be 104 matches, up by 40 since the Qatar World Cup in 2022, while Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo likely to play on this stage for the last time in their glittering careers.<\/p>\n Here are all the fixtures, results and latest group standings:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The World Cup began in Mexico City\u2019s Azteca Stadium, the site of Diego Maradona\u2019s most famous and infamous goals<\/a> against England<\/a> at the 1986 World Cup.<\/p>\n It was also the venue for two classic World Cup finals: Brazil\u2019s win over Italy in 1970 which included Carlos Alberto\u2019s iconic team goal to cap a 4-1 win; and Argentina\u2019s 3-2 win over West Germany in 1986, where Jorge Burruchaga grabbed an 84th-minute winner. <\/p>\n Mexico and Canada will host 13 games in each, and the United States will host 78. <\/p>\n From the quarter-finals onwards, the US will host all of the remaining matches, with the final in New Jersey\u2019s MetLife Stadium.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Who will win the World Cup?<\/p>\n Football\u2019s biggest question is back \u2013 and the debate is already heating up. England\u2019s new golden generation, Argentina\u2019s defending champions, France\u2019s relentless depth and Spain\u2019s evolving young side all have strong claims to glory at the World Cup.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s your turn: who do you think will lift the trophy?<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-758585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}