Argentina at the moment have been in fine form since making an appearance in the Copa America and were able to win the trophy, they have lots of talented players and they look more ambitious this time. France to me are the favourites to win this World Cup because of the kind of squad they have, players like William Saliba, Karim Benzema, Dembele, etc with very good squad but their form has being pretty poor. Anyways, they could still come back stronger with time. The same with the Brazilian team with good squad and talented players, they also stand as contenders for the world cup this year.
Undoubtedly the teams that you just named are the favorites, but I don't know what to think about Portugal, we can't forget that CR7 is here and this is his last World Cup and I don't think anything will be saved, I think he will save everything in this World Cup , if patra QAtar represents the last World Cup for CR7, Messi, and maybe for Neymar Jr, I think those teams will go for the kill because they will not leave anything for free, now in the World Cup we will see a great show, this is something that many of us believe expected, unfortunately we will not see Ibrahimovic's Sweden, nor the beloved Italy that we miss so much, everything would be perfect if these two more teams were there.
But there will be no North Macedonia in Qatar, so Germany is safe
I agree about Pandev as well as about any other great players from the "small" football countries. Therefore, if we talk about individual achievements, I always rate the World Cup extremely low (even lower than the Europa League) - after all, a player, no matter how good he is, cannot go to a more ambitious national team and compete for it if he was born in a country where football is poorly developed.
I agree with the last part. A few weeks ago, I posted here that African countries would perform really good in the world cup, if players like Pogba, Lukaku and Boateng decide to represent the country of their origin instead of the UEFA teams. But as you posted, there is no guarantee that these teams would even qualify for the world cup. If Lukaku decides to represent Democratic Republic of Congo instead of Belgium, then there is a possibility that the former may fail to qualify and we may never see him in the world cup.
BTW, I don't have any personal enmity with these players. Lukaku was born in Belgium, and it is his choice to represent that country.
But as for the first part, we can remember how badly played (and not in one game, but in several at once) the teams of France and England in the League of Nations. And this does not prevent them from being the favorites for the upcoming World Cup. I think we can evaluate Germany in a similar way. In fact, it is not known which of these teams will be in what shape at the World Championships, plus how luck will turn out. I would not underestimate Germany.
I really think that no team should be underestimated in World Cup. Because when it comes to a tournament no team is absolutely unable to win. We don’t have to go too far back to you see that as well. We can just look at that 2018 World Cup Russia.
Russia was an underdog in the World Cup but they have proved that they can also do great things. Honestly, none of us expected Russia to do so well in the World Cup. So I don’t think there is any way to underestimate any team who has already qualified for the World Cup.
In my opinion, the best team going into the World Cup is obviously France. But we all know that they did not perform very well in the UEFA Nations League. So, I wonder how they are going to perform in the World Cup.
Why do you think Russia was successful and did well in the 2018 World Cup? Well, they were already eliminated in the quarter-finals, which was not such a great and desired result for them as the hosts of the tournament. In the past, Russia achieved much better results at the world championships.
If we want to mention the national teams that really achieved great and unexpected results at the world championships, it is certainly Croatia, which was third at the World Championship in 1998, and second in 2018, after they lost in the final against France.
What can we say about South Korea, which, as the host of the 2002 World Cup, was fourth in the world?
As for this world championship, the obvious favorites are France and Brazil, but we still have at least 4-5 more national teams with reasonable chances to win the world championship, so we are expecting a very uncertain competition and small details and luck will decide, as always.
You are right, in fact it made me go back when Italy played with South Korea, at that moment I remember that I skipped a class, I was still in high school, and I saw how the Ecuadorian referee unfairly whistled very much in favor of Korea, and everything was very unfair, in fact one of the things that made me stop liking that world cup was because they eliminated Italy from the world championship very unfairly, with the best generation I would have seen, players who are legends and then it was found that the referee was drunk , he was taking drugs and that he was completely out of control, this was a consequence of the total corruption that existed in FIFA that these things really damage the sport, I hope that in the World Cup in QATAR things like these are not seen.