World Cup 2026, Group C: Brazil the Favourite — Morocco Disagree

The five-time champions arrive at MetLife Stadium carrying the group the way Brazil always carries tournaments — as the obvious answer to a question that hasn’t been asked yet. Carlo Ancelotti’s squad is deeper in talent than any national team in North America this summer. The projections put Brazil atop Group C in three of every five simulations. The bookmakers, the analysts, the pre-tournament consensus — all point the same direction.

Morocco do not read pre-tournament consensus.

What the Atlas Lions bring into Group C is something no simulation can model: the demonstrated experience of standing in front of a favoured opponent at a World Cup and refusing to move. In Qatar, they beat Spain. They beat Portugal. They held France. The 2022 semi-final was not an accident — it was built from a tactical identity that took 18 months to construct and that the players made their own. That identity is still here, even if Walid Regragui is not. He resigned in March, three months before kickoff, and Mohamed Ouahbi stepped in. Nine players from the Qatar semi-final squad travel to North America. Achraf Hakimi, 95 caps deep, Champions League winner with PSG this season, captains them. Sofyan Amrabat anchors the midfield. Brahim Diaz scored in every match at AFCON 2025 — five goals in five games, the kind of tournament form that travels into a summer.

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The first match of Group C is the group’s argument.

Brazil Under the Weight of the Favourite

Ancelotti’s Brazil qualified fifth in CONMEBOL — not the phrasing that sits easily beside five World Cup titles, but the fact. Six losses in eighteen qualification matches. Seventeen goals conceded. This is not a team that overwhelms. It is a team being constructed around discipline rather than improvisation, in exactly that order. Every instinct Brazil has about itself pushes against the sequence. Ancelotti is betting the title on the tension between those two things.

The release valve is Vinicius Júnior. At 23, the Real Madrid forward is one of the best attackers on earth — and Ancelotti knows precisely how to deploy him, because he already has. Raphinha provides width and intelligence from Barcelona. Neymar is here at 34, recovered from his second serious knee surgery, included in the squad with the kind of managed expectation that suggests Ancelotti sees him as depth rather than engine. Endrick, Gabriel Martinelli, Matheus Cunha — the forward options are not the problem. The problem, or the project, is whether the architecture Ancelotti has built holds under tournament pressure.

Morocco and the Coaching Question

The Regragui departure is the one variable in Morocco’s preparation without a clean answer. Ouahbi’s track record is with youth football — intelligent and technically precise, but not international tournament management. What he inherited is not a shapeless squad. Morocco’s defensive organisation runs through Amrabat and the back line in ways that don’t require managerial reinvention. The system exists. The chemistry exists.

Hakimi is the most dangerous attacking full-back at this tournament. Diaz gives Morocco a creative edge that the 2022 squad did not carry at the same level. Ranked eighth in the world, reigning AFCON champions, nine survivors of the greatest run in African World Cup history — the coaching wound is real. It is not a fatal one. What Ouahbi must preserve is less a tactical blueprint than a psychological inheritance: the knowledge that this group of players has already done what others said they couldn’t.

Scotland, Haiti, and the Logic of the Draw

Scotland return to a World Cup after 28 years. The squad Steve Clarke has assembled is arguably the most experienced in that long stretch: Andy Robertson at 92 caps and the captain’s armband, John McGinn at 85 the intelligence behind him. Scotland have never advanced from the first round in eight previous World Cup appearances. That record is not destiny. It is a structural problem this squad is trying to solve with experience, organisation, and a clear understanding of where the points are.

They face Haiti in Boston in the group’s opening round. Haiti are here for the first time since 1974. The most improbable qualifiers in Group C and — stripped of simulation percentages — the match Scotland cannot afford to treat as anything other than the three points it is. Win it, and they carry momentum into Morocco. Drop it, and Group C becomes a salvage operation. Scotland know this. The question is whether the weight of 28 years arriving all at once lets them play the way they know they need to.

Haiti are not merely a fixture. They are 52 years of waiting made present, and the opening match in Boston carries that weight on both sides.

The Shape of the Group

The second matchday on June 19 crystallises both tracks: Scotland face Morocco in Boston while Brazil meet Haiti in Philadelphia. The June 24 finale brings Brazil against Scotland in Miami and Morocco against Haiti in Atlanta.

The architecture favours Brazil topping the group. Ancelotti has the squad depth to recover from a difficult opener, and the remaining fixtures align. Morocco are the case for second — and, depending on what happens in New Jersey, possibly first. Scotland need the Haiti win and then a result against Morocco. Haiti are here to make a statement the final table will not fully record.

Brazil are the favourites predicted to top Group C. Morocco carry 2022’s proof that the favourites are only that until someone removes them. Both land at MetLife Stadium on June 13 to find out which argument holds.

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