And just like that, there were 48.

With the final window of World Cup qualification officially over, the field is set — as far as we know, at least — and now we can finally rank all of the actual participants in this summer’s FIFA World Cup.

These rankings, as always, are a simple combination of performance and talent. For performance, we’re using the World Football Elo Ratings — an opponent-, location-, and competition-adjusted ranking system for national teams. And for talent, we’re using the estimated squad values from Transfermarkt for each country’s most-recent round of callups.

Each input gets equal weight, and the result is what you see below.

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You’d think that with the expansion to 48 teams, Qatar would be the worst team to ever play at a World Cup. And by “worst” here I mean “team with the worst Elo ranking.” They’re currently the 93rd-best team in the world according to Elo, so if we doubled the size of the 2026 tournament and chose the participants based on this rating system alone, they still wouldn’t qualify.

However, there’s been one side worse than Qatar during the 32-team era: Togo, in 2006. They went 0-3, scored one goal, and allowed six. But Togo actually had a 22-year-old Emmanuel Adebayor on the roster while he was playing for Arsenal. Qatar’s best player, Akram Afif, plays for Al Sadd SC.

Do you believe in momentum in sports? If so, watch out for Curacao.

They’ve jumped up 38 spots in the Elo ratings over the past year, while no one in this summer’s field has improved by more than 13 places. Of course, the leap from 128 to 90 is a little easier than a move from 90 to 52.

Jordan have the least-valuable squad in the tournament: a combined value of €15.98 million, most of which comes from Rennes winger Musa Al-Taamari. For comparison, there are 10 players on the USMNT’s most recent squad with an estimated transfer value worth more than Jordan’s entire team.

So, why so high, then? They’re one of the biggest overachievers in the field. Most notably, in qualifying, they beat South Korea, 3-0, in Jordan, and then drew them again, 1-1, in Suwon.

It feels worth pointing this out, provided everyone who qualified for this tournament actually plays in this tournament: If Iran finish second in their group and the U.S. finish second in their group, they will play each other in the round of 32.

They have a bunch of players you know and perhaps love, but each passing game seems to suggest that this team just really isn’t that good. Their Elo rating is 82nd, and they just got waxed by Austria, 5-1, in a pre-tournament friendly, and followed that up with a 2-1 loss to Germany.

We always read way too much into these exhibition matches, but given that the main question about Ghana is “can this team finally play to its level of talent?,” a couple blowout losses in friendlies did nothing to suggest the answer is “yes.”

The federation seems to agree — they just fired their head coach.

Australia were probably the weakest team in the second pot of the draw, so landing in their group was a boon for the USMNT. But that doesn’t mean that the match against the Socceroos will be a guaranteed victory or anything like that.

Although there’s no superstar on the roster, most of this team play in Europe, and if not, they’re MLS guys or players from the Australian A-League.

Along with Jordan and Colombia, Australia have the biggest positive gap between their Elo rating and their market value of all the teams in the field. In qualifying, they beat Japan, the best team in the Asian confederation, at home, and then tied them on the road.

Alphonso Davies‘s hamstring injury isn’t as bad as it looked, and he should be back on the field in a matter of days and back with the Canada squad for the World Cup. That’ll boost them up these ratings, too.

But what a strange career he’s had so far. I don’t think anyone saw his move from the Vancouver Whitecaps to Bayern Munich as a slam dunk, and then he was starting for Bayern as they won the Champions League just two years later.

Except, 2019-20 remains the high point for Davies. He played 3,400 minutes across all competitions — a number he hasn’t reached since — and he’s only broken 3,000 one other time.

You could look at all of that and bemoan the lost potential — only to realize that Davies is still only 25 years old! His prime has just begun. Hopefully we all get to see him this summer, in full flight.

I wish there were some grand hysterical proclamations I could make about this team, but the reality is that they’re … fine.

They’ve been the best team in CONCACAF for the past two years, even though the USMNT and maybe even Canada have better high-end talent. Both of those teams have higher upsides and much lower downsides.

Mexico should be competent, and they’ll be playing at home, so they should at least get out of their group. But after that? They’re pretty much at the whim of the draw.

We’ll see if it can actually happen in the summer heat of North America, but the founder of the Red Bull way, Ralf Ragnick, has Austria playing full-on Red Bull ball.

Given that friendlies are included here, you can take these numbers with a hunk of skepticism, but Austria have allowed their opponents to complete just 73.8% of their matches since the end of Euro 2024. That’s the lowest mark of anyone in the field — including all of the teams that play on continents other than Europe, where pass-completion rates are significantly higher on average.

I would have written this, no matter what happened over the past two matches for the U.S. men’s national team. So, please consider the following:

• In 2022, Argentina won their final three matches before the World Cup by a combined 11-0 scoreline, but then they lost their first game of the tournament to Saudi Arabia. They went onto win the World Cup.

• In 2018, France lost, 3-2, to Colombia in the March friendly window, and then in their final match before the tournament, they tied 1-1 with a team that failed to qualify for the World Cup and didn’t even have a full-time manager. They went onto win the World Cup.

• In 2014, Germany tied Poland and Cameroon in their final two matches before the tournament started. They went onto win the World Cup.

• In 2010, Spain dominated the friendly slate, but then lost their first game of the tournament. They went onto win the World Cup.

The past four World Cup winners either scuffled through pre-tournament friendlies or were in a full-blown crisis after the first game of the tournament. Oh, and that team that France tied before winning it all in 2018? It was the USMNT.

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Somehow, this train is still going. They have the 24th-most valuable team in the tournament, and yet they’re currently inside the top 10 of the Elo Ratings. Luka Modric isn’t just still playing professional soccer; he’s still playing professional soccer at an incredibly high level.

Remember when he won the Ballon d’Or and we all sort of agreed it was a career-achievement award? That was eight years ago!

They’re fifth in the Elo ratings right now, and that means they’re tied with Portugal. They probably get dinged too much by this rating structure, but there’s a reason why their pre-tournament odds — right around 12th-favorites to win the tournament — don’t match up with a much higher level of play over the past couple years. And that’s because they only really have one true star in Bayern Munich’s Luis Díaz.

Friendlies, again, are imperfect pieces of information — at best — but Colombia’s struggles against Croatia and France in the most recent window hinted at a potential ceiling for this group of players.

Congratulations to Morocco, who won the Africa Cup of Nations despite losing the final of the Africa Cup of Nations, 1-0.

I don’t think teamwide emotional factors have much predictive power. I don’t doubt teams can rally against a collective cause and reach a higher level of performance by doing so, but I do doubt that we can identify those causes in advance.

But if you were going to try to identify a group of players who had suffered a common injury and then were going to rally together in the face of that injustice and win a bunch of games in a row, then, well, I don’t think there’s a better option than the team that literally won their continental championship and then were told, two months later, by a group of lawyers that they actually did not win their continental championship.

Senegal were already really good and really talented, and now they’re going to have a big ol’ chip on their shoulders.

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Given the USMNT’s performance against them last week, it’s worth repeating: this is not your slightly younger self’s Belgium. The Golden Generation of Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard is all but gone — or deep into its 30’s — and this team hasn’t won a significant match in a major tournament since they took down Portugal in the round of 16 at the Euro … in 2021.

They’re hanging onto a spot in the top 10 of the FIFA rankings, but they’re 19th in the Elo ratings. The teams that are in that range are the teams that the USMNT needs to be better than if it’s going to go anywhere this summer.

How much does Lionel Messi still matter for this team?

In World Cup qualifying, he only played 581 minutes, the 10th-most of any Argentine player. Despite that, he led the team in expected possession value added (roughly, how much all of your on-ball actions increase your team’s chances of scoring a goal), expected assists, and non-penalty goals.

Argentina haven’t needed him to be on the field as often — they finished nine points clear of second place in qualifying — but he’s still doing just about everything whenever he is out there.

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For Portugal, the question is: Will Cristiano Ronaldo‘s ability to score goals outweigh his inability to do anything else?

In World Cup qualifying, Ronaldo scored four non-penalty goals, which was tied for 13th-most of all players in Europe. But among anyone who played at least 350 minutes, he was last among all players in added xPV, or expected possession value, with minus-0.23. To be fair, Erling Haaland was also in the red (minus-0.16), but he made up for it with 16 non-penalty goals — more than twice as many as anyone else.

That xPV number also doesn’t account for the lack of defensive pressure you get when the 41-year-old is on the field. He absolutely can still find space inside the penalty area, but wouldn’t that be better used off the bench?

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One made-up stat I like to look at is a combination of expected goals and expected possession value. It’s basically just a mashup of the quantity and quality of shots you’re getting with the quantity and quality of passing and dribbling you’re doing. It’s not a bad approximation of the “value” provided by a given attacker.

Here’s how the top 10 across Europe’s Big Five top leagues and the Champions League shakes out so far this season:

What I want you to take away from those bars:

1) Four of those players are French.

2) None of them are Ousmane Dembélé, who is the reigning Ballon d’Or winner.