As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.

Kiwis can fly

They are three words woven into the fabric of being a supporter of New Zealand’s national soccer teams.

There is a beautiful sentiment behind the paradox: that the flightless bird, a native icon, can defy its limitations as well as the expectations of everybody else.

After all, New Zealand will be the lowest-ranked team — 85th according to FIFA’s latest list — at the 2026 World Cup finals, two places behind Haiti and three off Curacao.

But what it really means to be a New Zealand supporter lies in the contradictions. It’s the football family that can be a lonely experience, flipping from a dominant force in Oceania to the pitied minnows in the global soccer ocean.

The country renowned for its All Blacks, being represented by the All Whites. A rugby hotbed where soccer has become the country’s biggest team participation sport — but attendances and support for its national side are well short of matching those levels.

Soccer’s blossoming popularity is bringing its own challenges, as strengthening club rivalries impinge on a tightly knit national support base.

Despite those knots needing to be unpicked, the experience remains unburdened by heightened expectations and laced with enough self-deprecation to laugh at their unbeaten 2010 World Cup finals appearance in South Africa — the only country to avoid defeat at the tournament — that still saw New Zealand exit at the group stage.

Sixteen years later, New Zealand will take that unbeaten record with them this summer, their third appearance at the World Cup after a pointless debut at Spain 1982.

New Zealand fans are hoping to win a World Cup match for the first time (Joe Allison/FIFA via Getty Images)

“It’s actually quite tough being an All Whites fan,” Wellington-based supporter Dale Warburton told The Athletic. “Being in Oceania, you don’t get a lot of games. I’ve seen every home game since 2007 and that is 22 games in 19 years, usually against relative minnows of the Pacific Islands. It’s slim pickings.

“Then when we do play away or in Europe against the bigger nations, it’s two in the morning so you need a good alarm and strong coffee. It can be pretty lonely because it doesn’t get a lot of air time. But perhaps things are changing…”

Fellow longstanding New Zealand and Wellington Phoenix fan Tracey Hodge added: “The World Cup in South Africa, there were such low expectations. It’s not as stressful as countries where if you go to a World Cup, you must win. We drew every game in that tournament and it was like we’d won the thing.

“Our attitude is evolving. We’re getting better. Our player quality is better; they’re playing in better leagues overseas and then representing the country. But historically, it’s been relatively chill… because you go to a game, you draw against Italy, and you’re going crazy.”

New Zealand’s international landscape has improved thanks to the World Cup finals expanding to 48 teams. The creation of a guaranteed berth from the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) comes with a $9million ($15m NZ, £6.7m) payout every four years, which is good news for a team that was a goal away from averaging 6-0 victories through its five qualifying games in reaching the 2026 finals.

All too often, New Zealand’s World Cup dreams would end against opposition from other confederations at the final qualification play-off hurdle — a fate the All Whites avoided against Bahrain to make the 2010 finals in South Africa.

“Football is not even in our top three sports in New Zealand, so to create a fan culture for the national team is difficult because you’re fighting for space in the same air,” said 21-year-old Auckland videographer Dominic Johnson. “It’s only moments like Bahrain or back in 2023 (co-hosting) the Women’s World Cup when football gets the media spotlight. Hopefully, it will also be in June when the World Cup unites the country.

“The rest of the time, you’re doing it by yourself. The odd-one-out friend who is a fan of football compared to rugby, cricket or netball.”

One supporter who could be forgiven for feeling the burden of growing New Zealand’s fan culture is Matt Fejos. The futsal and youth football coach is back in Auckland after spells at the English Football Association and Manchester United Foundation.

His return to Aotearoa is good news for The Flying Kiwis, the New Zealand supporters’ club he founded that will help more than 10,000 fans turn keen interest into a ticket at this summer’s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“I’ve counted 43 countries where football is not the number one sport, so roughly 20 per cent of the world’s countries,” Fejos told The Athletic. “The back pages here are dominated by rugby. I asked those I coached in Auckland this week how many All Whites players they know, and it’s between one and three. Some don’t even know who Chris Wood is.

“It’s tough but you do it because you love it, and then it means so much more when you gather with others who care that much. Especially travelling overseas.

“There’s a real purpose to share it and write a bit of history as fans together, to grow a supporters’ culture of our own because we don’t have 150 years of tradition like in England.

“I just had 10 years there and it was amazing. We’re quite young at a lot of things here so there’s a real chance for us to shape it and do it our own, Kiwi way.”

Fejos is doing his bit. Seeing him bounce about in the uncovered East Stand of Eden Park as the Auckland rain fell during New Zealand’s eye-catching 4-1 friendly win over 10-man Chile at the end of March was something to behold.

The only interruption to his constant stream of chants and cajoling of the huddling hundreds around him was to collect a pack of batteries he had ambitiously ordered to the stadium after kick-off, in a bid to bring his colleague’s megaphone back to life.

The drop-off was successful, until the realisation they were the wrong type of batteries. You imagine Brazil’s Torcidas Organizadas or the England supporters’ band have help to avoid such issues.

New Zealand played matches against Finland and Chile on home soil in March (Joe Allison/FIFA via Getty Images)

Borrowing from soccer’s powerhouses has become a tool for New Zealand to create its fan identity. Some resulting issues are also familiar.

“The interesting thing, particularly with Auckland FC entering the A-League (Australia and New Zealand’s shared domestic top flight), is there’s more rivalry between Auckland and Wellington than ever before,” said Hodge.

“My experience of recent New Zealand games and the fan zone was different because Auckland and Wellington fans are in a phase where they don’t necessarily like each other. It then proves difficult to become a united group; more about where you’ve come from and less about supporting the New Zealand team, which is super important.”

Johnson, who was born in the United Kingdom, added: “That rivalry in its modern format is only two years old. There are so many people who’ve been introduced to the game through that.

“It’s only in the past 20 years or so where England’s club fans felt they could actually come together in the stands, so it makes sense it’s not there yet where you put away your club badge to support the All Whites — but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be long.”

Enter the chat, Julian Albright: “In the German Bundesliga, you’ve got 18 teams and when there’s a Germany national game, all the supporters are together. New Zealand has to go through this process to be one nation in the stands.”

Albright’s experience is first-hand. The 34-year-old German lives in Munich and is on our video call at 9:30pm in Auckland — 9:30am in Bavaria — and happy to flaunt the beer in his hand.

“I’m in the beer capital… it depends if you have to work or not and today I’ve got the day off, so it’s decent.”

A German citizen, Albright began his journey supporting New Zealand in the year leading up to the 2010 World Cup, became a fan of Wellington Phoenix and had a chance meeting with former All Whites international Ben Sigmund — and now Albright reserves his use of the word “we” for New Zealand over Germany.

“It’s pretty cool because I’ve been to more New Zealand games, five or six, and zero German national team games. You just get involved and it’s like family.”

Some of New Zealand’s fan experience is as you would expect. Australia remain their fiercest rivals despite Australia’s 2006 switch from OFC to the Asian Football Confederation in search of a more competitive schedule.

It was 2002 when the All Whites last beat the Socceroos. There is an opportunity for the two sides to meet this summer in the first knockout round, if they finish second in their respective groups.

Alongside the expected is the idiosyncratic, such as the laser kiwi banner that caught attention in 2017 as New Zealand attempted to make the following summer’s World Cup in Russia.

Showing the curious silhouette of a kiwi bird firing a luminous green laser from its eyes, some excited supporters credited the banner with helping fire up a record 37,000 crowd in Wellington as New Zealand held Peru to a goalless draw in the first leg of their qualifying play-off.

Someone’s still gutted about the Flag Referendum pic.twitter.com/PPDJBD7GWb

— Christopher Bishop (@cjsbishop) November 11, 2017

Peru went on to win the second leg in Lima 2-0, to book their place at the finals.

“There’s an element of pity for us too,” recalled Hodge. “We had 20 of us in Peru. We walked the streets in our full All Whites kit. Everyone wanted pictures because we were like a tourist attraction. Even post-match. It got a bit scary because the longer the game went on, the more angst there was in the stands, the more security came around us. But then Peru won and there was no issue — just an element of novelty about New Zealand fans.”

Warburton added: “I’ve been to a few Pacific Island games. It’s a different atmosphere and a real, fun festival. Everyone’s chanting and you don’t expect that enthusiasm or passion from fans of a team ranked 200-and-something in the world where it’s the biggest game of their lives.”

Of course, it will be New Zealand wearing those boots come the World Cup finals when they face Iran, Egypt and Belgium in Group G. A first finals win should earn a knockout-stage bow.

“People outside would go, ‘You’re only Oceania; you’ve got easy qualification’,” said Warburton. “We had that for South Africa. Everyone expected us to get smashed — and then we didn’t. Perhaps there’s a similar view going into this summer, of whether we deserve it. That we got an easy route and we’ll get smashed… I don’t think we will.”

More than half of the New Zealand supporters registering interest in attending the World Cup through The Flying Kiwis have included buying tickets for a fourth game. Even once ticket prices and the schedule were confirmed, including the possibility of New Zealand playing at one of four venues on four different dates, interest still held at a quarter.

“Compare that to those of us in South Africa who were calling their bosses just before the third game, asking to stay if we qualify. And if not, consider this my resignation because I’m not coming home if we make it through!” said Hodge. “We only booked for three pool games because we had no expectation of anything else.”

And that is why this summer stands as a measure of New Zealand’s development on the pitch, as well as the supporters’ opportunity to express how their identity in the stands has followed suit.

“It shows belief that certainly wouldn’t have been there before, and how much we’ve grown in 16 years since South Africa,” added Fejos.

“The obstacles of geographical isolation, not much money, rugby as the biggest sport, not much media here — and then our own expectations are rising. Now we’ve got to show everyone and take New Zealand to the world through football.”

The Language of Soccer series is sponsored by Google.

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Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article which first appeared on The Athletic in February 2025.

At the aptly-named Vitality stadium, 48 hours before Bournemouth’s game against Wolves in the Premier League, Andoni Iraola was smiling, laughing and talking about the importance of creativity and animation, chemistry and happiness, in football and beyond.

“I don’t have complaints,” he said. “I think we have a very good changing room, a healthy one. It’s something that will give you a lot of points at the end of the season. When problems come, you know the people you want next to you. I’ve no complaints. Happiness brings points.”

It is an unexpected twist in the conversation, because Iraola then nods to the book on the desk in front of him and said: “This is very unhappy — a dangerous route.

“But I liked the book.”

The book in question is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Iraola mentioned it to TNT Sports’ deaf language programme Sign Up before this interview. Not only has Iraola read the novel — a long time ago, he says — but, after becoming manager of Bournemouth, he visited Shelley’s grave.

Something known locally, if not so much nationally, is that Shelley is buried in the middle of Bournemouth.

“I read it when I was, like, 19, 20 years old,” Iraola said. “I remember the process, because I started by reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I really enjoyed that one. It was a different book, written differently — in (the form of) letters — one envelope, then another. I really enjoyed it, and from there I thought: ‘OK, now I go to Frankenstein, it could be something similar.’

“But now, when I remember, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is completely different. It’s nothing to do with Dracula. But I also enjoyed it.

“The connection with Bournemouth, I didn’t know until I came here. One day, just out walking with my wife, I think she told me: ‘I’ve read Mary Shelley’s grave is around here’. And it is in the middle of town. You can go there and see it. It’s nice to see, it doesn’t look like something special, but I think it is part of the history here. I liked the experience.”

Mary Shelley’s grave at St Peter’s church in Bournemouth (Michael Walker/The Athletic)

Iraola confirmed the outside impression of an uncommonly cerebral football man with a hinterland. He was studying Law when moving into the professional game as an Athletic Club player over two decades ago. He says reading has always been part of his life, including his football career.

“I started reading quite early and I remember all my football life — I was a professional from 20 — I used my travels by bus, plane, always with a book,” Iraola said. “It was not part of my preparation, but it helped me forget what was happening around me for one hour, two hours.

“What I get (from literature) is some distraction from football. When you start reading a book you are thinking about other things, you don’t think of football. It’s like going for a walk or riding a bike.

“Normally when I read, I read one book that is about detectives, quite easy, noir; and then I try to read one book that is more difficult intellectually, that requires more attention from yourself. It’s the way I’ve done it.”

Shelley was 20 when writing Frankenstein in the early 19th century, which Iraola agreed is mind-blowing when one considers the anguished and futuristic subject matter. It was published in 1818 and has never been out of print. She is buried in Bournemouth due to her son Percy — who lived in nearby Boscombe — moving her remains, and those of her distinguished parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, from London. This paragraph hardly does her extraordinary life justice.

“The generations before ours, I think they were much more mature at the same age,” Iraola said. “We sometimes want to be eternal kids, continuing our studies until we are almost 30. Life was different when she lived. You had to wake up earlier. I think it’s amazing she can write this book at 20.”

Iraola was not painting himself as football’s intellectual — he was responding to questions — and is quick to get back to football. But occasionally he returned to the novel in front of him and said he still sees “two, three players with books” on Bournemouth away trips, even though “nowadays we’re all on the phone, still reading but in a different way”.

He sat with the initials ‘AI’ on his tracksuit top, and if ever there was an early entry into the world of artificial intelligence, it is the unnamed ‘monster’ summoned by Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. “In a fit of enthusiastic madness, I created a rational creature,” Frankenstein declares at one point.

Iraola smiled again — he will come back to pithy two-word phrases such as “enthusiastic madness” — and talked about the creative process in the novel, and in football coaching. “There can be a similarity here,” he said.

“They create something in the book and they don’t know the repercussions, the consequences of what you are creating. Sometimes you will make mistakes creating. In this process you learn from mistakes and become better. I probably haven’t thought about it like this (gestures towards book), but it’s true that when you give some freedom, go to places that are new, you don’t know the end product.

“But sometimes you have to risk. Luckily for me — and not for the book — we are talking about football. The consequences are not as bad as what happens in the book. You can lose games, in the worst case (scenario) you can be sacked. But even if the worst happens, it’s only a game.”

He pauses, then adds: “But if you fail, I always say, you have to fail with your ideas.”

Iraola said his coaching ideas are not much changed from his first days as a manager at AEK Larnaca in Cyprus, which was eight years ago. He moved from there to Mirandes in La Liga’s Segunda Division, then to Rayo Vallecano and, in June 2023, to Bournemouth. Iraola left Bournemouth at the end of the season, but not before securing Europa League football.

“The things that have given me the chance to be here, to coach in the Premier League, are ideas I trust in from the start,” he said. “You have to adapt, but if you saw the first games I coached in Cyprus, what the team was trying to do is very similar to what we are trying to do here. You learn in the process, but the main idea doesn’t change a lot.

“I was clear in what I wanted to do. I had to learn a lot of small things — some not so small, influential — but the main approach I haven’t changed because it’s the way I love football to be played and it’s the way I feel comfortable coaching. I could play a different way, and I have the tools to do it, but I think I would be a worse coach practising a way of playing I don’t feel inside.”

Iraola, playing for Athletic Club, challenges Villarreal’s Robert Pires during his playing days (Jose Jordan/AFP via Getty Images)

Iraola’s style could be described as collective structure combined with dynamic individualism. After Bournemouth’s 4-1 dismantling of Newcastle at St James’ Park in January 2025, midfielder Tyler Adams encapsulated the approach as “controlled chaos”.

It was a two-word compliment, but it is terminology Iraola does not want to encourage. Organised spontaneity might be more appropriate. Nor is he eager to punt any Marcelo Bielsa comparison — Iraola was coached by Bielsa in Bilbao. “Marcelo is… you learn a lot from him. I’m quite conventional,” Iraola said.

“I’m not sure if I like, when they talk about my teams, the use of this word (chaos),” he said. “People have used this term, especially here in England, and I understand what they mean, but I think there’s much more organisation behind it than it looks.

“There has to be good organisation and from that good organisation there can appear very good ideas — what the players do when they are on the ball — but you have to put in starting points. It’s dangerous to associate creativity with everything being a mess. You have to put in the structure and get in a position from where players have to make their own decisions.

“The game is for the players. Coaches are just the assistants. Coaches cannot pretend to control the game — luckily for the game. But I try to encourage this creativity, try not to limit touches in training for example, try to encourage them to carry the ball, go one against one, take risks. Because I think it’s the easiest way to make a difference.

“You can organise patterns but, collectively, a lot of things have to go in synchronicity; players going by their own can make a difference.”

Iraola is not chastising Adams. He is clarifying a coaching attitude.

“It’s something that you have to develop in training every day,” Iraola says. “Sometimes I love drills in training where players have to make a lot of decisions. It’s not just a closed exercise where you tell them to pass from there to there. Normally we try to train with opposed drills, otherwise I see it as a little bit artificial — unopposed training. If you have someone challenging, it becomes something completely different.

“In these drills sometimes they even have to cheat, or find ways to win the exercise. I think they are good for developing collectively and individually. From academy level, it’s something I encourage in the coaches, to find exercises that are demanding mentally for the player.”

Iraola overseeing training (Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)

When The Athletic visited Bournemouth, it was hard to miss Iraola’s warmth, and how the players responded to the environment. However, Iraola said managerial distance is a quality he has had to acquire since his Larnaca days.

From this, however, flows his vital human ingredient, chemistry, and that leads to all-important workplace happiness.

“When I have to make decisions, I have to be very cold,” he said. “Sometimes you want a player you really like personally to do well, but if he’s going to be worse than another player you don’t like so much you have to think of the group. That’s hard.

“You have to think of the kind of people you want around your club and who will make the group of players and the atmosphere around the club better. Sometimes there are players you don’t think deserve to play but you know will give you more chance to win. You have to choose and you have to be honest.

“Chemistry is key. It is mandatory. I have not seen many teams get good results without chemistry, but it is something you have to build. You need good leaders to set a culture inside the club, clear values, because on the pitch, these values will appear.

“Happiness is very important. That’s the reason why managers value players who don’t play a lot but train very well. They are difficult to find and these are the players no manager wants to lose. For me these players are really valuable, even if the players don’t feel it the same way.

“This is one of the main parts of chemistry. If you’re playing, it’s very easy to be happy, but the ones who continue to push even when not playing keep the level high.”

Iraola is earnest, serious in this moment. In Frankenstein, Shelley wrote: “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”

Back in February 2025, Iraola knew what he was creating at Bournemouth. It was a big smile.

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Before that weekend’s game, on Saturday at lunchtime, across from St Peter’s church is a pub where fans of Bournemouth were beginning to gather for pre-match pints. It is called the Mary Shelley. There is a Hammer Horror version of Frankenstein’s monster’s head on the sign.

Inside, Andrew and Brian, long-time Bournemouth supporters, were chatting. Andre was beaming. He was at Anfield in August 2022 when Liverpool hammered Bournemouth 9-0, so he relished last season — never mind the one just passed. “Eleven hours on a coach; now we’re beating Man City,” he said.

The Mary Shelley pub in Bournemouth (Michael Walker/The Athletic)

When he hears Iraola had been across the road to the churchyard to visit Shelley’s grave, he is impressed. But he was already.

“Eddie Howe should have a statue outside the ground and Iraola is absolutely incredible,” he said. “Iraola has developed these players, Justin Kluivert, Ryan Christie and a lot of the others. He’s lifted them up to such a high standard. And they give it their all, you see that. It makes you feel proud as a supporter.”

Bournemouth lost that weekend, and did not qualify for Europe. But this season they did, finishing sixth in the Premier League.

Now Iraola has left Bournemouth and joined the team that finished one place higher than them in the Premier League — Liverpool.

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“I watched a little bit. In the end, you transform into a fan. One eye is crying, one eye is happy, because the guys were doing well.”

In June 2014, Marco Reus was coming off the best season of his young career. His 23 goals for Borussia Dortmund had put him in the mix for a place in Germany’s starting XI at the World Cup.

Then, just before half-time in their final pre-tournament friendly against Armenia, he went down under a relatively innocuous-looking challenge from Artur Yedigaryan. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. His left ankle briefly twisted in a direction that ankles should not twist. It turned out he had torn a ligament in that ankle. His World Cup was over before it began.

There will have been a grim recognition and empathy in Reus, and many other players, as news of those who will miss the 2026 World Cup filtered in. On Saturday it was Lennart Karl, Bayern Munich’s 18-year-old who had the potential to be a starter and a wildcard for Germany. Before him it was Hugo Ekitike (France), Kaoru Mitoma (Japan), Rodrygo and Estevao (Brazil), Patrick Agyemang (USMNT), Serge Gnabry (Germany) and Xavi Simons (Netherlands). All of them have joined a grim brotherhood of players who, down the years, have had their World Cup dreams dashed by injuries.

“As a young kid, you always dream of playing in a World Cup,” Reus tells The Athletic, “to have the privilege to wear the shirt. Injuries are part of the game, part of our life and you have to accept that. The important thing is just to be ready mentally… you’re just trying to understand the situation, focus on the moment to come back.”

Reus then had to watch from afar as his team-mates went on to win the whole tournament. When they reached the final against Argentina, the German Football Association offered to fly him to Rio de Janeiro to attend the game. He declined, ostensibly to focus on his recovery. But you can also understand why the prospect of having to sit in the stadium and watch his friends win football’s ultimate prize when he was supposed to be there would have inspired, at best, mixed emotions.

After the game, Reus’s friend and winning goalscorer Mario Gotze brought out a Germany shirt with Reus’ name on the back, carrying it around the pitch as he celebrated. A nice gesture, but one Reus did not see.

“Honestly, I was already in bed,” he says. “I watched the game then went to sleep. It was a nice gesture. I saw it the next day. I was very surprised, and very happy that he did that. We’re good friends: it showed in that moment what his character was.”

Injury against Armenia cost Marco Reus his World Cup place in 2014 (Daniel Roland/AFP via Getty Images)

Reus, one of the great German players of his generation, was a little cursed when it came to the national team. He was first called up to the German squad just before the 2010 World Cup but had to withdraw with injury. He missed Euro 2016 too, and the 2022 World Cup. He did manage to play, and score, at the 2018 World Cup, and although Germany crashed out in the group stage, at least he did get to experience one tournament.

But missing the one Germany won clearly hurt, as it did for others.

Christian Vieri lost on penalties with Italy in the 1998 World Cup quarter-finals, and was the goalscorer when they were knocked out by South Korea in 2002, but redemption was in his sights in 2006. Struggling for game time at Milan, Vieri was told by Azzurri coach Marcelo Lippi he still planned to pick him and encouraged a move to Monaco in order to stay sharp, but he suffered a knee injury in March and was ruled out. He then had to watch his colleagues go on and win the tournament.

“I’d say that I struggled in the years after that,” Vieri told Gazzetta Dello Sport in 2014. “I lost the dream of a lifetime.

“But in my heart, I rejoiced with all the guys, who had always been team-mates of mine for the Azzurri. It was our generation’s time. We had played together from the age of 17 and were European champions with the under-21s.

“Of course, that night in Berlin was perfect, the only thing missing was myself.”

Perhaps even crueller than that is missing the chance of lifting the trophy as captain. Emerson was Brazil’s skipper before the 2002 World Cup, but missed the whole thing in freak circumstances after dislocating his shoulder while keeping goal in training. “When something has to happen, it happens,” Emerson told the media. “You can fall down the stairs and get hurt. It could have happened to any player but it happened to me.”

Even if they missed ultimate glory, Reus, Vieri and Emerson did at least experience other tournaments. But there’s no guarantee Ekitike, or Estevao, or Agyemang, will play at future World Cups.

Just ask Cory Gibbs. In 2006, the Florida-born defender had moved on loan to ADO Den Haag from Feyenoord to get game time before the World Cup in Germany. And it worked: head coach Bruce Arena had told him he would be in the USMNT squad, and Gibbs completed 90 minutes in a pre-tournament friendly against Morocco.

“Playing the full 90 felt great,” Gibbs, now an agent, tells The Athletic. “I went into the locker room and still felt great, but 15 minutes later, I went into the shower and I could slowly feel my knee just getting tighter and tighter.”

Gibbs, who had suffered knee issues throughout his career, started to fear the worst. The medical staff told him not to panic until they had scanned his knee properly. But those scans brought bad news.

“It hit home right away. My first thought was, ‘I can’t believe I’m missing the World Cup’. It was devastating. This is a player’s dream.”

A few weeks earlier, midfielder Frankie Hejduk had also withdrawn from the squad after suffering an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, which had been preceeded by a grimly prescient conversation. “It was me, Clint Dempsey, Eddie Johnson, Marcus Beasley,” says Gibbs. “We were joking, saying there’s always one or two people who get hurt and miss a World Cup — who’s going to be that next person? Literally days later it ended up being me.”

It’s a fate that has befallen some of the game’s true greats. Alfredo Di Stefano helped Spain qualify for the 1962 World Cup but picked up an injury before the tournament and, while he was technically part of the squad that travelled to Chile, was not fit enough to play. Karim Benzema suffered a thigh strain in 2022 and missed France’s run to the final. Pep Guardiola missed the 1998 World Cup with injury. Rafael van der Vaart strained a calf in training just before the Dutch squad was named in 2014.

Karim Benzema missed out on the 2022 World Cup when he was in the form of his life for Real Madrid (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

Usually things are fairly clear-cut, injuries obvious enough to entirely rule a player out, but some examples are less straightforward. Take Romario’s omission from the 1998 Brazil squad by Mario Zagallo on the basis of a calf injury: the great striker thought he could have at least played some part in the tournament, but Zagallo did not want to risk wasting a spot on a half-fit player. Romario did not take it brilliantly: he gave a tearful press conference, then later had caricatures of Zagallo sitting on a toilet, pants around his ankles while his assistant Zico handed him toilet paper, painted on the bathroom doors of a bar he owned in Rio de Janeiro.

Occasionally players are left with a tricky choice about their fitness: do they prioritise the day job, or an impending World Cup? Steven Gerrard had the dilemma in 2002. Throughout the season, he had suffered from nagging injuries, primarily to his groin but emanating from a back problem, on which he could have had surgery to guarantee he would be fit for Japan and South Korea, but that would have meant missing crucial weeks as Liverpool chased down a Champions League place. In the end, he chose to have ongoing treatment to stay available for his club.

“Sacrificing Liverpool in the short term to guarantee my fitness for England in the summer of 2002 was something I just couldn’t do,” he wrote in his first autobiography. “Just imagine me announcing to Kopites: ‘Sorry, lads, I’m taking three months off now so I’ll be fine for the World Cup. Sorry about screwing up Liverpool’s season. Don’t worry, the UEFA Cup will be fun’. No chance. That would have caused a riot.”

But in the last game of the season, Gerrard felt a rip in his groin. Gerard Houllier, Liverpool manager at the time, told him he would miss the World Cup. “No. Don’t say it. Stop. I don’t want to hear it,” Gerrard recalled thinking. He went on holiday to Dubai, partly in an attempt to take his mind off the ultimate footballing FOMO, but wrote that he “missed the World Cup so badly that I even walked up and down the beach in a pair of England shorts”.

Sometimes it’s a blessing in disguise to miss out: France were so abject in 2002 that Robert Pires, having ruptured his ACL at the end of maybe the best season of his career, might ultimately have been relieved not to be part of the team that was dumped out in the first round. Similarly, Lassana Diarra missed 2010 after he was struck down with sickle cell anaemia, and was thus absent from a shambolic French campaign that featured Nicolas Anelka being excluded after a row with coach Raymond Domenech, which prompted the rest of the squad to go on strike in support of their colleague, causing years of recriminations.

Sometimes these injuries can bring abrupt ends to storied international careers. Michael Ballack was ruled out of the 2010 tournament with an ankle problem suffered playing for Chelsea in the FA Cup final. Without him, a young team featuring Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil and Bastian Schweinsteiger slightly unexpectedly reached the semi-finals in South Africa.

As such, head coach Joachim Low did not select Ballack after he returned to fitness the following season and probably expected the midfielder to retire. But Ballack did not, and a slightly undignified back-and-forth resulted when the German FA announced that a friendly against Brazil the following year would be a “farewell” match. This was news to Ballack, who refused the call-up and called it “a farce”. His last international turned out to be a friendly against Argentina in March 2010, and he was left stranded on 98 caps.

How do players deal with the tournament when it comes around? Is it too painful for a player to watch when they should have been there? Reus watched some of Germany’s games in 2014, but was too focused on his recovery to really pay attention. Gerrard watched England’s game against Argentina in 2002 in a Dubai bar with a selection of expats. Vieri could not bring himself to take in any of Italy’s victorious 2006 campaign.

Pires in 2002, it was all too much.“I would simply like people to leave me alone now,” he told L’Equipe. “Things are clear; the World Cup is dead for me.”

Gibbs, however, turned himself into a fan. “I was still watching every match, supporting (the team). If it was one where the coach had left me out, it would probably affect me differently. But with injury, I was still watching and supporting the team.”

This will be the situation that Karl, Ekitike, Mitoma, Rodrygo, Estevao, Agyemang, Gnabry, Simons and others find themselves in. Each will deal with it in their own way. They might watch, they might not. But Reus’s advice is: look to the future.

“It wasn’t a nice experience,” he says. “But for me it was always, try to come back stronger, just be yourself in this moment.”