{"id":667678,"date":"2026-05-13T23:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/667678\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T23:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T23:13:09","slug":"2026-fifa-world-cup-soccer-norway-morocco-ecuador-among-dark-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/667678\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 FIFA World Cup soccer: Norway, Morocco, Ecuador among dark horses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since the World Cup debuted in 1930, only eight different nations \u2014 Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, England, France and Spain \u2014 have managed to hoist the trophy at the world\u2019s biggest soccer tournament.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, only 13 countries have ever made it to a World Cup final, and all of those countries are either from Europe or South America.<\/p>\n<p>So, is the list of contenders for the 2026 World Cup that small? Not a chance.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the traditional powers are among the favorites for this summer\u2019s tournament, but here are five national squads that could upset the apple cart and make a deep run when action starts up next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the World Cup debuted in 1930, only eight different nations \u2014 Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, England,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,226106,561,82,88809],"class_list":["post-667678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-latestnews","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-worldcup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}