ثماني مباريات لتكون ملكًا: الدرجة الإضافية على السلم

Throughout history, every World Cup champion has played seven matches. Not six. Not eight. Seven. Three group stage games. Round of 16. Quarter-finals. Semi-finals. Final. Add them up, and it’s seven. This number has never changed in nearly a hundred years and over twenty editions of the World Cup.

Until 2026.

With 48 teams bringing a 32-team knockout stage, the champion will now have to play eight matches. Three group stage games. Round of 32. Round of 16. Quarter-finals. Semi-finals. Final. Add them up, and it’s eight. That extra match might just be a number to you. But to a footballer, it’s an additional 90 minutes of high-intensity strain on his knees, thousands more micro-tears in his muscle fibres, and one more extreme surge of his adrenal system from zero to a hundred.

I once spoke with a retired striker who had played in World Cup knockout matches. He described the experience of the knockout rounds to me: “That’s not football. That’s 90 minutes of suffocation. Every time you touch the ball, it’s like holding a bomb. You can’t make mistakes. You can’t hesitate. You can’t let your legs stop—because the moment you do, you’ll be substituted, and you might never get another chance.” I asked him, “What if there was one more match?” He thought for a moment, then said something that stuck with me: “Then I’d need my 22nd man. Not the 11th. The 22nd. That guy sitting at the very edge of the bench, whose name you’ve probably never heard. Because by the fifth knockout match—everyone is already drained. The one who can still stand at that point isn’t the strongest. It’s the one who can still run.”

Eight matches. That extra game isn’t just a minor tweak to the schedule. It’s a new threshold—one that no one has had to cross in the past hundred years. The 2026 champion won’t just have to play the best football. They’ll have to endure the longest. And in the world of football, those two things have never been the same.