For the first time, all three World Cup hosts are into the last 16

Before a ball was kicked, the worry about a 48-team World Cup was that the hosts would get an easy ride into the knockouts and the tournament would sag under the weight of dead rubbers. Three weeks in, the three host nations have all reached the last 16, and none of them got there by drifting. The United States, Canada and Mexico are all still standing, and for a tournament being co-hosted by three countries for the first time, that is a story worth sitting with.

Joint hosts going deep is not new. In 2002, South Korea and Japan shared the tournament and both came through their groups, with South Korea going all the way to the semi-finals. But that was two nations. Never before has a World Cup been split three ways, and never before have three hosts all made the knockout rounds together. Each of them arrived with a different kind of milestone attached.

Mexico end a 40-year wait

Mexico’s was the heaviest weight to shift. They beat Ecuador 2-0 at the Azteca, Julian Quinones scoring in the 22nd minute and Raul Jimenez adding the second nine minutes later, and in doing so won a World Cup knockout match for the first time since 1986. That is the year they last hosted the tournament, and in the four decades since they had lost seven round-of-16 ties in a row. The Azteca has seen a lot of Mexican heartbreak at this stage. This time it saw the opposite.

There was a nice historical footnote to go with it. Mexico became the first Concacaf side to knock a South American team out of a World Cup in the knockout rounds, having lost the previous five such meetings. For a country that has spent 40 years being the nearly team of the last 16, beating Ecuador felt like more than one result.

Canada break new ground

Canada’s milestone was even more basic: they had never won a World Cup knockout match at all. They fixed that against South Africa in the very first knockout game of the tournament, and they did it the hard way, with Stephen Eustaquio thumping in a long-range winner in the 92nd minute past a helpless goalkeeper. It was not a vintage performance, but it did not need to be. Canada are into the last 16 for the first time in their history, and a team that spent years as tournament makeweights is suddenly playing knockout football with nothing to lose.

The USA ride out a scare

The United States had the most conventional route of the three, beating Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0, though not without drama. Folarin Balogun opened the scoring and was then shown a contentious red card after a VAR review, leaving the hosts to see out a chunk of the game a man down. Malik Tillman’s free kick made it 2-0, and a home World Cup that carries an enormous amount of expectation is still very much alive.

The hard part starts now

This is where the free hits end. The draw has been kind to nobody from here. Canada face Morocco in Houston on July 4, up against a side that reached the semi-finals in 2022 and knocked out the Netherlands to get here. Mexico meet England on July 6, and the United States run into Belgium on July 6. All three are favourites to lose, and it would be no surprise if the North American run thinned out quickly over the next week.

But that is a problem for later. For now, three host nations have all made the last 16 of a World Cup that plenty of people expected to be a bloated, low-stakes slog. Two of them broke long-standing curses to do it and the third did it a man down. Whatever happens next, the tournament its hosts wanted has actually turned up.

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