World Cup Group Preview: England, Croatia, Ghana, Panama
England arrive with a familiar burden and a very different face on the touchline. Gareth Southgate moved the national team from perennial angst to perennial contenders; Thomas Tuchel has been hired to finish the job. Not to steady the ship. To win the thing.
This is England’s 17th World Cup, the only star on the shirt still rooted in 1966. The expectation now is not nostalgia. It is escalation. A squad packed with experience and depth has been handed to a coach who has already navigated the sharp end of the Champions League and come out with a trophy.
The side feels balanced in almost every department, and Declan Rice embodies that equilibrium. He screens, he builds, he presses, he calms. England’s shape bends around his intelligence. With Rice in the middle, Tuchel can shift gears between control and aggression, between a compact block and a front-foot press.
The danger is not talent. It is timidity. England have, at times, allowed caution to seep into their play just when a knockout game begged for ruthlessness. Tuchel’s challenge is to strip out that hesitation without losing the structure that has underpinned recent tournament runs.
At the sharp end stands Harry Kane, the constant amid all this evolution. He is England’s record scorer, the man who has already delivered eight World Cup goals and continues to terrorise defences in club football with Bayern Munich. Right now, you can argue no striker on the planet marries finishing, movement and playmaking quite as effectively. Kane is both finisher and fulcrum; if England go deep, his fingerprints will be everywhere.
England are not coming to make up the numbers. They are coming to test whether a Champions League winner on the bench and one of the game’s deadliest forwards on the pitch can finally drag a second star onto that crest.
Croatia: Modric and Dalić, one last roll of the dice
Across from them stand Croatia, a nation that has long since stopped caring about other people’s odds. Seventh World Cup. Finalists in 2018. Semi-finalists last time. A country of fewer than four million that keeps gatecrashing football’s biggest party.
Zlatko Dalić remains on the touchline. Luka Modric still pulls the strings. They go again.
This time, the climb looks steeper. Several key figures are edging past their peak, and the physical demands of tournament football do not soften for sentiment. Yet Croatia have built a reputation on refusing to fade when logic says they should. Their style helps. A slow, possession-based game, heavy on patience and angles, suits the heat and the rhythm of group-stage football.
They will not chase chaos. They will take the ball, keep it, and make opponents suffer in small, nagging ways.
If Modric is the mind, Joško Gvardiol is the armour. Outstanding at the last World Cup, now a pillar at Manchester City, he arrives again as one of the most imposing defenders in the tournament. His reading of the game and recovery speed allow Croatia to hold a higher line than their age profile might suggest. The concern is his recent return from a broken shin; managing his minutes and sharpness will be crucial.
Croatia know exactly who they are. They know the path, the grind, the extra-time marathons. Repeating those heroics would be their greatest trick yet. But no one in this group will take them lightly. Not after what they’ve already done to the World Cup’s established order.
Ghana: Talent, tension and the Queiroz question
Ghana arrive with a familiar story: talent everywhere, cohesion nowhere near as obvious. This is their fifth World Cup, still chasing the magic of 2010, when they reached the quarter-finals and came within a heartbeat of a historic semi-final.
Recent form has been grim. Five straight friendly defeats before a draw with Wales finally stopped the slide. That run prompted a hard-nosed solution: Carlos Queiroz. The veteran coach is synonymous with structure, discipline and defensive rigour. His appointment signals exactly what Ghana’s federation wants – order first, expression later.
That approach may be necessary, because they are missing Mohammed Kudus. His injury strips Ghana of one of their most inventive, unpredictable attackers. Without him, the team risks becoming functional rather than frightening, especially against opponents comfortable in possession.
The responsibility, then, shifts towards Antoine Semenyo. Fresh from a 17-goal Premier League season and an FA Cup final winner for Manchester City, he has shown he can decide big occasions at club level. Internationally, though, the numbers tell a different story: three goals in 34 games for Ghana. That gap between domestic dominance and national-team output cannot continue if Ghana want to escape the group.
Queiroz will tighten them up. Lines will be compact, distances short, risks limited. The question is whether, stripped of Kudus’s spark, Ghana can still find the moments of individual brilliance needed to crack organised defences.
Panama: Scar tissue and a modest target
Panama return to the World Cup with one memory they would rather erase. In 2018, they were torn apart 6-1 by England, Harry Kane scoring twice and the gulf in class laid brutally bare. That kind of defeat lingers.
This is only their second appearance on the biggest stage, and the objectives remain grounded. A first World Cup point would count as progress, a tangible marker that they belong a little more than last time.
Thomas Christiansen has at least some encouraging signs to cling to. Recent results have not been disastrous, a run that underpins their surprisingly high Fifa ranking of 33. They have learned to be competitive, to hang in games longer, to manage moments better.
Then came Brazil. A 6-2 friendly defeat that snapped any illusions about the distance still to travel. When elite sides accelerate, Panama can struggle to hold on.
They will not talk about revenge against England, or about rewriting history in one night. Their battle is more basic: stay compact, cut out the collapses, scrap for every inch, and chase that first point.
In a group loaded with pedigree and scars, someone will overreach and someone will surprise. The question is whether this time England finally seize the stage, or whether the old tournament warriors from Croatia, the volatile promise of Ghana, or a hardened Panama side rip up the script again.
