PORTUGAL
Manager: Fernando Santos
MVP: Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid)
Best WC Result: Third, 1966
Portugal’s Euro-winning side in 2016 was not a vintage year and still, thanks to an arsenal of top-tier talent, they got the damn job done. A few jewels of that side remain with exciting additions like André Silva, João Cancelo, and Rúben Neves while Cristiano Ronaldo, perhaps world soccer’s greatest dramatist, will be looking to land the only trophy that’s ever evaded him in what will likely be his last World Cup. Don’t bet against it. The 33-year-old is built like Iron Man and has a singular talent for dragging teams to gold.
IRAN
Manager: Carlos Queiroz
MVP: Ashkan Dejagah (Nottingham Forest)
Best WC Result: Group Stage
This one we threw to Kaveh, an architect and massive soccer fan, originally from Iran, who we spoke to outside a cafe in Pasadena where he now lives. He knows way more about this than all of us put together.
“My father played soccer at club level in Tehran. At the time, in Iran, however, there wasn’t really any professional sport. You’d go and play a match and then go and drive your taxi. He was a semi-pro footballer and also a tennis player. He loved sport, but football for Iranians is like in the rest of the world: it’s an obsession. When we qualified, against Australia in 1998, for the first time in twenty years, we were all singing and dancing in the streets. Tehran did not go to sleep that night. It was insane, man. It was something like we’d never seen before. People there do not party in the city; they party at their houses because there are rules. But that day, it was clear the regime was just gonna let it happen. Let all the rules pause for a day. There was too much energy. Everyone was too happy. We were driving through the city after the game, and the streets were gridlocked, and we climbed out of the car, parked it right there in the road, and just went on partying.
“Soccer is the sport. We all played on concrete in the sun, that’s just how it was. An older person in our building would go and meld some metal together to make a small goal—about the size of a hockey goal—and put it in the street for us to play with and then at night, and when we were done, we’d drag it back in until the next day. The whole country is still the same way. You can see that in the way we play: there are a lot of very, very good technical players in Iran, but a lot more has been added to our team by this coach, Carlos Queiroz.
“The Portuguese manager has been there seven years—a long time in any sport—and he’s super popular in Iran: he’s a pro, he doesn’t let anyone boss him around, and that’s how the country works. He fought back and won the support of important people. Queiroz brought discipline to our technical, talented team—players who learned their skills playing in dirt or on concrete. Football is a very emotional sport for us, but Queiroz settled that down: emotion is important, but if you have too much in a team, you end up with a lot of tension, and that can have a lot of drawbacks. We don’t have that anymore. We still have a very young team—better than in the last World Cup—and I hope they’ll get some very good experience in Russia because, in four years, many of them are going to be playing in the next one.
“Certain parts of the city—especially Westwood and West LA—are very Iranian neighborhoods, what they call ‘Tehrangeles’. When it comes to the World Cup, everything, cafes and restaurants and bookstores and music stores will be covered in flags and shirts and posters: when it comes to Iranian teams in sports, the people become very proud. Even if it was the World Cup of volleyball, and I’ve never played volleyball in my life, we’d be there, packing the venue to the rafters. But football is football. That’s the difference. Nothing comes close to that level of support.”
SPAIN
Manager: Fernando Hierro
MVP: Sergio Ramos
Best WC Result: Winners, 2010
With a 6–0 demolishing of Argentina in the spring friendlies, Spain not-so-quietly reminded the sporting world who the papá grande is around these parts. Talismanic boy wonder Andrés Iniesta—a man we all thought would never age—has finally transitioned, like Zidane in 2006, into a full galloping specter of delight on the field and will seek to snatch a second trophy in his final tournament alongside a team, if not quite as mouth-wateringly good as the Golden Years of 2008 through 2012 then somewhere pretty damn close.
MOROCCO
Manager: Hervé Renard
MVP: Mehdi Benatia (Juventus)
Best WC Result: Second Round, 1986
Back in the big leagues after twenty years away, Morocco’s qualification was built off a strong defense with French manager Renard’s side not conceding a single goal. That’s an impressive feat whichever way you’re slicing it, but they’re unlucky to be the weakest team in the tournament’s Group of Death. With Juventus’ Mehdi Benatia at the heart of defense, they’ll be difficult to beat, but it’s a lack of goals that may let them down with star striker Ayoub El Kaabi untested at the highest level and Mbwark Boussoufa talented but in the twilight of his career.
