The countdown to the 2026 World Cup is on! Each day ahead of the tournament’s return to North America, Yahoo Sports will highlight an insight or moment that showcases just how grand the world’s biggest sporting spectacle has become — even beyond the expanded field of this year’s global event.
This summer, four teams — Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan and Uzbekistan — will make their debut at the World Cup, showing off their national pride at the global tournament for the first time in their history.
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It’s the largest group of debutantes since 2006, thanks in part to the newly expanded 48-team field. There will be plenty of exciting players competing for the first time at the tournament this year, but here are a few to keep an eye as the debutantes take to the field.
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Ryan Mendes, Cape Verde
Cape Verde, a tiny archipelago nation off the western coast of Africa, will be led into the global tournament by captain Ryan Mendes. Mendes, a 36-year-old midfielder, has 16 years of experience on the national team and has helped lead the team to some impressive results over the past few years.
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Born in Mindelo, the second-biggest city in Cape Verde, Mendes played his first game in 2010, and has seen the team grow while playing nearly 5,000 minutes for his country.
Cape Verde captain Ryan Mendes celebrates with his teammates after a win in the Africa Cup of Nations in 2024. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE/AFP via Getty Images)
(FRANCK FIFE via Getty Images)
Mendes is a living legend for Cape Verde, holding the most caps and the most goals in the national team’s history. After joining the Blue Sharks’ roster as a teenager, Mendes has played in 71 matches across competitions and has picked up 15 goals and six assists in that time, per FBRef.
“Ever since 2010 that I’ve been here, it hasn’t changed. The difference now is that there is a little more quality, and you can see that on the pitch. But on a human level, it’s always been the same,” Mendes told FIFA in December.
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Leandro and Juninho Bacuna, Curaçao
As the smallest country to play in the World Cup, it’s not a huge surprise that Curaçao would pull two of its players from the same talented family. This summer, the Blue Wave’s midfield will be anchored by a pair of brothers: team captain Leandro Bacuna and his younger brother Juninho Bacuna.
The Netherlands-born brothers both have Premier League experience and are at the core of the Curaçaoan starting lineup. Leandro, 34, has played for the team since 2016 and is one of the most-capped players on the team; Juninho, 28, is a more recent arrival, but has joined his brother as one of the country’s biggest all-time scorers. (The two also have an older brother, Johnsen, who is also a professional soccer player.)
Although Juninho represented the Netherlands at the youth level, he eventually made his one-time switch to Curaçao to join his older brother. In an interview with FIFA published last week, Leandro said that he convinced his brother to make the national switch in 2019, after Curaçao played in the Concacaf Gold Cup.
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“He was still waiting, playing for the U-21s in Holland. He [was] waiting for his chance for the Dutch national team. But then we played [the Gold] Cup in America, and I called him and said: ‘I need some help.’ And he said: ‘OK, next time, when I can, I will come and join you,’” Leandro told FIFA. “For me, it’s a very nice thing to play with your brother. I think you don’t really get a lot of opportunities to do that, and to represent your own country, and to play together.”
Ali Olwan, Jordan
One of the biggest stars of the Jordanian team is Ali Olwan, a young forward who was absolutely key to their run to the World Cup.
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At 26, Olwan is already the hero for Jordan. In World Cup qualifiers last June, the forward scored a hat trick to lead Jordan over Oman and eventually clinch the country’s first-ever tournament berth. Olwan’s three goals started with a penalty scored in first-half stoppage time, before two tricky on-the-move finishes in the 50th and 63rd minutes.
In total, Olwan had nine goals across the qualifiers last summer, bringing him up to 18 goals across competitions for his country, per FBRef. The surging forward will hope to bring that energy into the tournament as Jordan navigates a tricky Group J that includes the defending champions, Argentina.
Eldor Shomurodov, Uzbekistan
For Uzbekistan, the captain’s armband will be worn by forward Eldor Shomurodov, who enters the World Cup as one of the team’s most veteran and prolific players. Shomurodov has been representing Uzbekistan since 2015, when he was 19. In that time, he’s racked up 79 caps — the most of any active player on Uzbekistan’s roster — and scored 39 goals, an all-time record for the country.
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Crucially, Shomurodov has led Uzbekistan through a high-profile global tournament before. The country made its Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Though Uzbekistan did not make it out of the group stage, Shomurodov made history by scoring the country’s first-ever Olympic goal, with a penalty kick against Spain in first half stoppage time.
Now, the 30-year-old will aim to make a little more history with Uzbekistan this summer.
