It's so close you can almost touch it. After years of build-up, the 2026 World Cup will kick-off in just over 24 hours' time when co-hosts Mexico face off against South Africa in a repeat of the opening game from 2010. Over the next five-and-a-half weeks, records will be broken and legacies rewritten as a number of modern greats do battle to win the most recognisable trophy in all of sport.

There really is nothing like the World Cup. Even just qualifying generates a level of nationwide excitement that the club game simply cannot match, which is why we witnessed truly joyous scenes all across the globe as one country after another secured a spot at this summer's festival of football in North America. The final six participants were confirmed in March, with Sweden, Turkiye, Czechia and Bosnia & Herzegovina taking the four remaining slots in Europe, while Iraq and DR Congo came out of the inter-confederation play-offs.

It's so close we can almost taste it. The 2026 World Cup is now just a day away, with the best players on the planet descending on the United States, Mexico and Canada for what promises to be a superb summer of football. While some teams will solely harbour dreams of getting out of the groups, others know that anything other than a trophy parade in late-July will go down as failure. We're set, then, for five-and-a-half weeks of drama, filled with joy and heartbreak in equal measure.

During last December's World Cup draw at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., FIFA president Gianni Infantino was introduced as "football's No.1 fan". Most supporters unsurprisingly scoffed, but Infantino is a football fan. And, just like every football fan, he's never forgotten his first World Cup. It was the 1982 tournament in Spain and, for the Swiss-born son of Italian immigrants, it was "spectacular".

In March, after the U.S. men's national team suffered back-to-back humblings at the hands of Belgium and Portugal, Mauricio Pochettino wondered aloud about the players he had at his disposal. Whether that vocal wondering came from a place of honesty or from a place of motivation, only Pochettino knows. The only certainty was that his assessment was blunt: his team, man for man, wasn't as good as the elite.

After 18 years of protests, controversy, disillusion and division, the Glazer family's time in charge of football operations at Manchester United came to an end after Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS' purchase of a 25 percent stake in the club in early 2024. United had been debt-free until the Glazers invested just £270 million (£346m) of their own money into the £790m ($1 billion) deal that saw them become new owners back in 2005, with the rest borrowed against the club. And the Glazers have been accused of using the Red Devils as a cash cow to fund their business empire in the United States ever since.

There's just one week to go until the biggest show on earth gets underway, with the 2026 World Cup kicking off on June 11. If you haven't already caught a serious case of World Cup fever, what better way to get in the mood than by checking out the very best kits that will be on show in North America this summer.

It's always hard for representatives of a team that did not succeed to make a point about issues with a qualifying format, but few could begrudge the frustration evident among the England squad on Tuesday after the Lionesses fell short of the one automatic qualification spot available to them for the 2027 Women's World Cup.