World Cup: Now is when legends are born

Thanks for joining us, Cape Verde. Appreciate your fight, Paraguay. Way to show up for most of your matches, USMNT. You got your turn onstage at a magnificent World Cup … and now it’s time for the big dogs to take the spotlight.

Six of the top eight squads in FIFA’s worldwide rankings are still alive in this year’s tournament, meaning we’re in for something special when the semifinals begin on Friday. There’s a time for Cinderella stories, and then there’s a time for the kaiju of the field to just start whomping on each other. That time is now.

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Kylian Mbappe and France. Leo Messi and Argentina. Erling Haaland and Norway. Harry Kane and England. These are the titans of the sport, the nations that rule the world and the men who are their heart, soul and spine. They dominate both the pitch and the stat sheets, giving us highlight after cinematic highlight that other, already-eliminated teams can only watch and envy.

Consider, for instance, defending champion Messi setting the record for most goals in a World Cup career:

Or World Cup rookie Haaland casually firing a nuke from long range:

Or the snakebit Kane throwing off the last of his penalty kick ghosts:

Spectacular highlights, all of them and more. The scoring leaders are well on their way to double digits in goal totals; Messi has 8, Mbappe and Haaland are one behind him, and Kane has 6. The squads are in position — every single nation is just one win from the semifinals, two wins from the finals.

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Between now and those finals, we’ll have two sets of two rest days, time to let the tension and drama build, time for the players involved to reckon with the enormity of what they’re about to face. It’s not too much to say that what these squads do over the next few days will shape the rest of their lives. If they succeed, if they fail, they’ll have millions watching — and remembering — their every move.

The every-four-years cadence of the World Cup means that every goal, and every miss, holds so much more weight than the same feat in an annual championship. Messi and Mbappe know this already; Kane, Haaland and the rest are about to find out.

Mbappe capped his first World Cup, at age 19, by scoring France’s last goal in the 2018 finals, a 4-2 victory over Croatia. Four years later, Mbappe doubled that total, scoring twice in the 2022 finals to push the match to penalty kicks … where Argentina triumphed. In that match, Messi ended a lifetime’s worth of frustration, scoring two goals to help La Albiceleste claim the title.

It’s also worth noting that legacy can break the other way, too. France’s Zinedine Zidane headbutted his way out of the 2006 tournament and, soon afterward, Les Bleus lost to Italy. Italy’s Roberto Baggio soared the fifth and final do-or-else penalty kick over the crossbar, handing Brazil the 1994 World Cup. A young Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal cemented his heel status early when he helped get his then-Man U teammate Wayne Rooney sent off with a controversial red card as Portugal dismissed England from the 2006 quarterfinals.

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Plus, there are big names who haven’t quite yet made the mark expected of them in this year’s tournament. Can Spain’s Lamine Yamal (just one goal so far) step up and take control of this tournament at just 18 years of age? Will England’s Jude Bellingham or France’s Ousmane Dembélé outpace their teammates over these final few matches? Does Belgium’s Romelu Lukaku have one more moment of glory ahead of him? Can Achraf Hakimi and Morocco become the first-ever African nation to lift the World Cup trophy?

This, now, is where World Cup legacies are born. This is when history is made. The world will be discussing what happens, and what doesn’t happen, in the coming days for years to come. Who’s going to rise to meet the moment, and who will get outplayed and pushed aside?