Set Pieces, VAR and Squad Depth: The Three Axes That Will Decide the 2026 World Cup

In the 118th minute, Mbappe scored his third goal of a World Cup final. France still lost.

I was sitting in a small cafe in northeastern Beijing, a 55-inch screen in front of me and a notebook with three full pages of set-piece notes beside me. On the fourth page I wrote one line: Argentina won with two penalties, one dead-ball situation and a shootout. What kept my eyes glued to the screen was not Mbappe's hat-trick. It was the way Emiliano Martinez stood on his line, shifting seven centimetres to his left before every single kick.

When the ball goes dead, I start reading the game. And at a World Cup with 104 matches, an expanded group stage and intercontinental travel, dead balls are no longer a chapter in the appendix. They are the main chapter.

This piece is not a prediction of who lifts the trophy. It is my attempt to rebuild order in a tournament that most people are looking at from the wrong angle.

Context: a tournament stretched to its limit

The 2026 World Cup takes place across the United States, Canada and Mexico, opening on 11 June 2026 and closing on 19 July 2026 according to FIFA's official schedule. It is the first edition with 48 teams, split into 12 groups of four, across 104 matches - 40 more than the 64 played in Qatar in 2026.

The two finalists will play eight matches instead of seven. Semi-finalists play seven. A team eliminated in the round of 32 may still have played five matches inside 20 days. Very few previews mention this when they label the tournament "the World Cup of stars".

Geography is a tactical variable too. Host cities stretch from Vancouver in the northwest to Mexico City in the south, from Atlanta to Los Angeles. A team could play in Dallas on 15 June at 38 degrees Celsius, then fly to Vancouver on 20 June for 19 degrees and completely different humidity. That physiological swing sits outside every score-prediction model.

I have covered eight World Cups and eight Olympic Games, plus multiple editions of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France. The biggest lesson from endurance sport is simple: over a long event, the winner is not the fastest rider on stage one. It is the one who manages energy best on stage six.

Elite football is moving toward that logic.

Axis one: set pieces have become a primary scoring channel

During the 2026/20 season, when global football paused for the pandemic, I downloaded footage of 50 Liverpool matches and counted every situation by hand. The result forced me to rewrite how I saw Jurgen Klopp's team: 14 of their 37 Premier League goals that season, roughly 38 per cent, came from dead-ball situations. Six of those were Virgil van Dijk headers.

I wrote a deliberately provocative piece back then: Klopp's side was the real set-piece team, and peak Barcelona were merely a short-passing team. The article travelled, a well-known football podcast mentioned my name, and I was invited onto a live debate. I stand by it.

That was six years ago. The trend has since become the standard.

At the 2026 World Cup in Russia, Gareth Southgate's England were the clearest example. They reached the semi-finals with the majority of their goals coming from corners, free kicks and long throws - a model built deliberately on the training ground rather than luck. Southgate said publicly that his squad spent more time on set pieces than any previous England team.

At Euro 2026, played in 2026, I went out onto the streets of Beijing and interviewed 30 fans before the knockout rounds. Most picked England or Germany. I said on a live broadcast that Italy would win, and my reasoning was not their attack. It was their structured defensive block plus their ability to exploit dead balls in extra time and shootouts. On 11 July 2026, Italy drew 1-1 with England after 120 minutes and won 3-2 on penalties at Wembley.

The alleys of Beijing taught me how to read a European Championship. People choose the team they love, not the team that is better organised. Those are two different things, and the difference usually lives in the exact minutes when the ball is not moving.

The anatomy of a modern set piece

A corner at World Cup level in 2026 is no longer one player crossing and ten others jumping. It is a drill divided into four phases.

The first is the delivery. Most top sides now use short corners or worked corners to drag the defensive line out of shape before swinging the ball to the far post. The share of short corners among quarter-finalists at Euro 2026 was clearly higher than four years earlier.

The second is screening. Teams use two or three players to block the goalkeeper's movement, forcing him to stay on his line. This is the zone where VAR and assistant referees struggle most, because a screening player commits no obvious foul if he simply stands still.

The third is the second ball. Roughly 60 to 70 per cent of corners are cleared beyond the penalty area. Whoever controls the second ball gets a shot from the second line - something traditional expected-goals models still undervalue.

The fourth is the immediate counter. A cleared corner turned into a counterattack within four seconds is the most dangerous situation in modern football, because both centre-backs are in the opposition half.

Modern football has no randomness, only data that has not been read yet. And most set-piece data still sits outside the television viewer's field of vision, because the camera follows the ball, never the screener.

Long throws: the least exploited data zone

If I had to pick the single most underused area at the 2026 World Cup, I would pick throw-ins in the opposition's final third.

Top teams now employ throw-in specialists capable of delivering the ball 35 metres. At club level, Brentford and Liverpool have built throw-ins into genuine set-piece routines. At national-team level this is harder, because international windows are short. But in a tournament with 104 matches across more than a month, whoever solves that problem first gains a free source of goals.

The majority watches the stars; I watch the gaps. The gap here is the wide channel, where the opposition full-back often stands high with nobody behind him.

Axis two: VAR has changed how teams defend dead balls

Video assistant referees arrived at the 2026 World Cup, and semi-automated offside technology followed in 2026. At the 2026 World Cup the systems will be refined further, with shorter processing times and broader review scope.

What almost nobody discusses is the double effect on set pieces.

On one hand, VAR makes shirt-pulling, shoving and blocking goalkeepers inside the box far riskier. At Euro 2026, the number of penalties awarded after video review rose noticeably compared with previous editions. Centre-backs must now defend with positioning rather than with hands.

On the other hand, VAR creates a reverse psychological effect. When players know every contact may be reviewed, they tend to reduce intensity inside the box. That inadvertently benefits teams that drill set pieces properly, because defences no longer dare to aggressively clear out the attacker before the ball arrives.

I expect that within a few years teams will split set pieces into two categories: those designed to score, and those designed to win penalties. Two different drills, two different runs.

The transparency problem remains unsolved

Here I have to say something the media usually avoids.

Technology is advancing. The mechanism for explaining decisions inside the stadium is essentially frozen.

When a penalty is awarded in the 88th minute, fans in the ground do not hear the reason. They do not see the VAR room's analysis on a screen. They only see the referee run outside the box, touch his earpiece, and point to the spot. Meanwhile viewers at home get three replays, an offside line and motion graphics.

Two groups of spectators, same match, same ticket money, two completely different levels of information. That is structural unfairness, not a technical glitch.

Several competitions have trialled announcing decisions over stadium public address systems. A number of domestic leagues and a few continental competitions have run pilots. At major tournaments it is still not a mandatory standard. Transparency remains a slogan more than a procedure.

If the 2026 World Cup does not fix this, we will keep seeing matches whose results are technically correct but wrong in terms of trust.

Axis three: squad depth in a 104-match tournament

This is the most important axis and the one least discussed before every World Cup.

A 2026 World Cup winner will have to play eight matches across roughly 38 days, travel through at least five cities in different time zones, and endure at least three different climate conditions. In that environment, the quality of the bench matters as much as the quality of the starting eleven.

Look at the new group structure. With 12 groups of four, the top two from each group plus the eight best third-placed teams advance. A team can reach the knockouts with four points, or even three in some scenarios. The tactical consequence is that teams will start calculating points very early, and may rotate heavily from matchday two onwards.

Whoever understands this first gains a major edge.

Do not ask who will win; ask who will not collapse. In a tournament lasting more than six weeks, collapse does not come from one defeat. It comes from a centre-back losing form in match five, from a holding midfielder forced to play 540 consecutive minutes, from a striker losing sharpness after three matches on the bench.

Five substitutions and the battle in extra time

Five-substitution rules have become standard across major competitions. With the 2026 schedule, this will be a more important tactical tool than any formation.

A good coach will not use all five windows inside 90 minutes. He keeps one or two for extra time and for the shootout, because set-piece specialists and reliable penalty takers are often on the bench.

This is where smaller nations can make a difference. When starting-eleven quality is uneven, keeping a dead-ball specialist or a shootout goalkeeper on the bench for 120 minutes can be an equaliser.

Lessons from teams with real depth

France have been the model case for years. At the 2026 World Cup they could bring players from major clubs off the bench. At the 2026 World Cup, after losing several key men to pre-tournament injuries, they still reached the final and lost only on penalties.

Argentina in 2026 were the opposite example with the same logic. They lacked France's even depth, but they had a clear structure: the ball had to reach Lionel Messi, and everyone else ran into the spaces he opened. A clear structure can compensate for missing depth, but only up to a point.

I backed Mbappe when the whole world was still doubting him. That was 2026, after France beat Argentina 4-3 in the round of 16. Mbappe was 19, completed 6 of 11 dribbles, created four chances and was directly involved in two goals. I wrote that France would win, not because they were battle-hardened, but because they had a generational talent. That piece was shared thousands of times and opened my first professional door.

But Mbappe also taught me the opposite lesson. In 2026 he scored three goals in a final and still did not win. One outstanding individual can save a team for one match. He cannot save a team for eight.

The fourth axis nobody mentions: sports business and club identity

I work in China and follow the Asian sports market daily. There is a paradox I keep observing, and it connects directly to major tournaments.

Global shirt sponsors now occupy prime space on club chests. But most of that money does not return to the local community where the club was born. It is measured by brand exposure, by how many times a logo appears on international television, by market reach.

Meanwhile, local sponsors - small businesses in the club's home city, supporters' associations, youth football scholarship programmes - are gradually disappearing from the sponsorship landscape.

At a World Cup this does not apply directly, because it is a national-team tournament. But the indirect effect is clear. Players who grow up inside a commercialised club system tend to be less rooted in their local community. And when they pull on a national shirt, motivation does not appear automatically.

I am not against money. I am against money flowing in only one direction.

The contrarian angle: where I might be wrong

This section is mandatory, because every serious analysis needs an exit door.

First. I am betting heavily on set pieces, but there is a real possibility that top teams have already learned to defend them too well. At Euro 2026, several of the deepest-running sides used a hybrid system of zonal marking plus one dedicated man-marker, with considerable success. If most teams copy that at the 2026 World Cup, the dead-ball goal supply could fall rather than rise.

If set-piece data stops yielding returns, the analytics market will adjust very quickly. And my angle becomes outdated inside a single tournament.

Second. I believe squad depth decides, but the five-substitution rule actually favours smaller teams. A side like Uruguay or Japan can use five changes to constantly refresh pressing intensity, while a big team with expensive stars is commercially obliged to keep them on the pitch. Depth then stops being an advantage for the strong.

Third, and this is what I weigh most. The increase in matches could push teams into extreme caution. When four points is enough to advance, teams play not to lose rather than to win. A tournament with 104 matches but many 0-0 draws destroys its own commercial value.

If that scenario unfolds, nobody will remember set pieces or VAR. They will remember boredom. And every tactical analysis, including this one, becomes an academic argument and nothing more.

From one reckless bet, I learned to listen to what the market whispers. And the market is whispering that more matches do not mean more goals.

The indicators I will track

To make this analysis verifiable, here are five concrete indicators I commit to updating after every round.

One, the share of goals from set-piece situations across the whole tournament. If that share exceeds 30 per cent, my set-piece thesis holds. If it falls below 22 per cent, I am wrong.

Two, average corners per match. In recent World Cups this has hovered around 10. If it drops below 8, teams are playing safer and dead balls have less room.

Three, average substitutions used in extra time. This directly measures how much coaches value depth.

Four, the number of VAR decisions overturned involving set pieces inside the penalty area.

Five, the average time gap between the referee's signal and the moment fans in the stadium learn the reason. This is the transparency index, and I predict it will remain very high in 2026.

Closing: what I believe and what I leave open

I believe the 2026 World Cup will be decided by things that never appear in highlight reels.

I believe the champion will be the team that spent the most hours on the training ground rehearsing dead balls, the team with the best fitness coach, and the team with the strongest bench.

I believe VAR will keep generating controversies that nobody in the organising bodies wants to resolve, because resolving controversy means giving up control of information.

And I believe this: fans inside the stadium will remain the last group to learn what just happened on the pitch they paid to enter.

That is what I want to change.

A major tournament always compresses emotion into short moments. A penalty in the 88th minute, a far-post header, an offside line on a screen. All of them were decided long before, in training sessions nobody filmed.

Someone will lift the trophy on 19 July 2026 at MetLife Stadium. I do not yet know who.

But I know exactly how they will win.