From Spanish wonderkid to Norwegian goal machine: The next generation of World Cup stars

We’re just days away from the start of the World Cup featuring the biggest names in global soccer. They include two — Lionel Messi of Argentina and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal — who are considered among the greatest to ever step on a field.

Before the matches kick off, let’s preview the players who are expected to have the largest impact for their countries. We have already hit the legends, players who have competed at the highest level for years and figure to do the same again in the coming weeks. Now we’ll turn to the next generation of superstar talent.

Lamine Yamal, Spain

Once described by French legend Thierry Henry as being “ahead of the game,” Yamal, 18, is a rising superstar and widely considered to be the future Messi.

He has already won three La Liga titles with Barcelona, a Spanish Cup, a Spanish Super Cup and the European Championship, in addition to being a Ballon d’Or runner-up.

It isn’t just the statistics that make Yamal a superstar — though it certainly doesn’t hurt to be one of La Liga’s top scorers.

He is able to complement his obvious technical skills with flair and maturity in high-pressure situations that are well beyond his years. Spanish national team manager Luis de la Fuente described Yamal this year as being one of those players whom you watch and think he’s “touched by magic.”

It’s an aspect of the game that can’t be described in words but can be felt whenever those athletes get a touch on the ball. Yamal is most likely your favorite player’s favorite player to watch, to steal a somewhat corny adage.

Yamal was born in Spain to a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea. He said he chose to play for the Spanish national team because he wanted to compete in European championships.

This will be his first World Cup appearance, and he’s coming in riding high after Barcelona won its second consecutive La Liga title a few weeks ago. He’s expected to arrive following a pause in his club play after a hamstring injury sidelined him for more than a month; Barcelona’s management has predicted that he will be in shape in time for the tournament.

Spanish fans are putting a lot of hope on Yamal as the national team has failed to make it past the round of 16 since it won the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Jude Bellingham, England

Even by its lofty standards, Real Madrid had a particularly star-studded roster this season — a real who’s who of the best young soccer players in the world. At forward, the team has France’s Kylian Mbappé, plus Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior and his countryman Rodrygo.

Then there’s Jude Bellingham, the 22-year-old Englishman, in midfield. “He’s the best player they have,” former Dutch great Ruud Gullit told beIN Sports, a Qatari TV network, last year.

The same could be said of England’s 2026 World Cup team. The English have talent everywhere — Harry Kane at striker, Bukayo Saka on the wing, Declan Rice in midfield. But Bellingham could be the best of them this summer.

Bellingham is tall, athletic and an all-around skilled midfielder who often draws comparisons to the French legend Zinedine Zidane. When Bellingham was young, he told L’Équipe, his father always wore a fake Zidane shirt. One day, Bellingham finally asked about it, and his father told him to watch YouTube highlights.

Now he plays midfield for Real Madrid and wears No. 5 — the number Zidane wore for the same team two decades ago.

“I have said in many interviews how much I admire Zinedine Zidane,” Bellingham said in 2023, according to The Associated Press. “I am not trying to be the same as him. I am just trying to be Jude, but it is definitely a bit of a homage to how great he was.”

At the 2024 Euros, Bellingham emerged as a true star. In the round of 16 against Slovakia, he scored a brilliant 95th-minute equalizer to save England — and allow Kane to win the game in extra time. In the quarterfinals, he helped beat Switzerland on penalties. Then he set up England’s only goal in the final before the English ultimately lost to Spain 2-1.

England enters the World Cup still looking for its first major trophy since 1966. If Bellingham ends that streak, its fans will be wearing his shirt for years to come.

Erling Haaland, Norway

In his day job playing for Manchester City of the English Premier League, Haaland almost never plays the role of underdog.

Backed by the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi, City has vast resources to sign the world’s best players, and it has won the Premier League, the world’s top domestic league, four of the last five years. Haaland, a 6-foot-5 striker who pulls his blond hair into a signature tight ponytail, has been central to that success, having scored more than 100 goals in four seasons.

In Norway’s first World Cup appearance since 1998, he will try to continue his scoring binges while instead trying to take down the powerhouses. As by far the most accomplished Norwegian player, Haaland acknowledged last fall that helping Norway qualify was “a lot on my shoulders.”

“I’ve been feeling the pressure ever since I came to the national team in 2019,” he said in November. “Honestly, I felt more pressure then than now, because I wasn’t that good to handle the pressure. Now I’m better. I think I’m an expert.”

That’s good for Norway, because advancing out of the group stage against Iraq, world No. 14-ranked Senegal and No. 1-ranked France will require Haaland to again shoulder the burden of being the most potent threat to score while also creating openings for teammates.

His performances during World Cup qualifying shouldn’t be taken as a predictor of future performance, but Haaland was undeniably prolific as he scored 16 goals in eight games.

For Haaland, there is also a personal connection to making this tournament. His father, Alf-Inge Haaland, played for Norway at the 1994 World Cup, which was also hosted in the U.S.

“To be able to go to the U.S. and play the World Cup there is truly something special, and it’s going to be incredible,” Haaland told CBS Sports in December. “I’ll have goose bumps. Maybe I will cry when they sing the national anthem.”

Weston McKennie, United States

Since they finished third at the first World Cup in 1930, the U.S. men have never finished better than eighth. Entering this summer’s tournament, they’re still out to prove they can beat the world’s established powers on the sport’s biggest stage. If it comes to fruition, you can thank a connection to the 2006 U.S. men’s team.

A few months before the 2006 World Cup kicked off in Germany, the U.S. men visited the host country to hold a meet-and-greet at Ramstein Air Base. Among those who showed up was a 7-year-old named Weston McKennie, whose father, John, was a member of the U.S. Army stationed in the nearby small town of Otterbach.

Holding a yellow ball, McKennie posed for a photo between U.S. players Landon Donovan and Carlos Bocanegra — an encounter he later credited with helping him realize being a professional soccer player was possible.

Now 27, McKennie is a U.S. midfielder who is plenty familiar with the high stakes of international soccer. At 17, he made his debut in the German Bundesliga for Schalke. By 21, he’d joined Juventus in Italy’s Serie A, becoming the first American ever to play for the storied club. At 23, he joined the English Premier League with Leeds before he returned to Italy and Juventus, where he has spent the last four seasons. He’s also no stranger to the Champions League, having scored 11 goals.

McKennie is coming off his best season as a pro, and the U.S. must hope his role as a connector between defense and offense will carry over from Serie A. In its last World Cup appearance in 2022, the U.S. mustered just three goals in four matches.

Vinícius Júnior, Brazil

Throughout Brazil’s storied soccer history, most of its best players have been known by a single name — Pelé, Ronaldo, Robinho, Kaká, Neymar. When one fades into the background, another seemingly appears. That’s how fertile the soccer talent is in Brazil, a country that has won the World Cup a record five times.

Neymar, Brazil’s last mononymous star, is now on the backside of his career. He’s 34 and hasn’t been the same player since a 2023 knee injury. There have been enough questions about his play that when word came that he had made Brazil’s World Cup roster, it made headlines.

In his place, a new star has emerged: Vinícius Júnior. Also known as Vini Jr., it’s not quite one name, but close enough.

Vini Jr. started his career with the Brazilian club Flamengo and showed so much promise that when he was just 16, Real Madrid reportedly paid around $50 million to secure his rights when he turned 18. Sky Sports reported that it was the second-largest signing from Brazil in history. The largest? Neymar’s.

Vini Jr. has been worth the money, though, and then some. He has developed into an electric left winger with the speed, athleticism and dribbling ability to solve any defense.

He has helped Real win La Liga and Champions League titles in the same year, twice — in 2022 and again in 2024. In the 2022 Champions League final, he scored the only goal in a 1-0 win over Liverpool. Then, in 2024, he scored again as Real beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0. That year, he also finished second to Rodri for the Ballon d’Or award.

Not only is Vini Jr. one of the best players in the world, but he has also spoken out against racism in soccer and done charitable work in his native Brazil. He’d be hailed as a hero even more if he were to deliver the country’s first World Cup win since 2002.

Jamal Musiala, Germany

Jamal Musiala spent much of his childhood in England, developing his game in Chelsea’s youth academy, playing for England’s youth teams with his close friend Jude Bellingham.

But in the summer of 2019, around the time of Brexit, the 16-year-old Musiala left to join Bayern Munich in Germany. He was born there, to a German mother and a British Nigerian father, before he moved to England as a young boy.

When Musiala arrived at Bayern, his new teammate Leroy Sané gave him a nickname — Bambi, presumably for his tall, slender build. He was just 17 when he made his debut for Bayern and became the youngest player in team history to that point to play in the Bundesliga.

In the end, Musiala decided to represent Germany on the international stage. Not England.

“I’ve thought about this question a lot,” Musiala told The Athletic. “‘What is best for my future?’ ‘Where do I have more chances to play?’ In the end, I just listened to the feeling that over a long period of time kept telling me that it was the right decision to play for Germany, the land I was born in.”

Now, Musiala is 23 and one of the best young players in the world, an attacking midfielder who’s a magician with the ball at his feet, who also has a knack for finding the back of the net. From 2022 through 2025, he scored 34 goals in 82 Bundesliga matches for Bayern.

On the German national team, he’s joined by two Bayern teammates — right back Joshua Kimmich and center back Jonathan Tah. Combined with Florian Wirtz, the point-guard-esque midfielder who plays for Liverpool, they are Germany’s talented core.

Last summer, Musiala sustained a major injury during the Club World Cup, a fractured fibula and a dislocated ankle, and he seems to still be working his way back into form. If he’s healthy, expect him to be at the center of the action for Germany.

For England, he will always be the one who got away.

Alphonso Davies, Canada

Canada is more known for hockey than soccer, but don’t get it twisted — this is a legitimate World Cup squad that could surprise this summer. Davies, 25, one of the best defensive players in the world, is a major reason. He began his career with MLS’ Vancouver Whitecaps, for whom he was the first player born in the 2000s to play in a game.

In 2019 he made the move to Bayern Munich for a then-record MLS transfer fee and helped deliver a Champions League title just one year later. He has been a star for the perennial European powers ever since.

Davies will be integral at left back for Canada ... if he can get on the field. A hamstring injury he sustained against Paris Saint-Germain in a Champions League semifinal leg on May 6 will keep him out for “several weeks,” according to the team. The setback is on top of an ACL tear he sustained last year that forced him to miss most of this past season. Will that lack of recent game experience plague him in the World Cup?

Canada needs Davies to be physically fit to have a chance to advance deep in the tournament. If he misses any time, it will turn to forward Jonathan David and midfielder Ismaël Koné to step up and lead it on the world stage.