Who’s going to win the 2026 World Cup?We’ve all got our ideas, theories, predictions. They may be based on a hunch, on data, on many hours of in-depth viewing and scouting, on some spurious AI nonsense, on something a guy in the pub told us.But what if you threw out everything you know about this summer, and based your prediction entirely on history? What if you went through every team that has won the World Cup, looked for common factors and applied them to the 2026 competitors to figure out which side most closely fits?Well, good news: you don’t have to do that, because The Athletic has done it for you.We’ve analysed each of the 22 teams to have won the World Cup, and asked the key questions. Who was the manager? How old was their squad? How did they qualify? What sort of players did they have? And how many were home-based?It turns out some things are crucial for a World Cup winner, and some aren’t. It doesn’t matter how you performed in the previous tournament, but it does matter where you’re from. You have to be good… but not too good. It does matter who the coach is… but, at the same time, it doesn’t.This is not entirely scientific — history can only tell us so much, and knockout tournaments are incredibly difficult to predict — but it’s got to be better than the guy in the pub… right?First, let’s get a few factors out of the way that, based on past World Cups, do not make much of a difference.Hosting is one, something that hasn’t been ‘a thing’ for a few generations. The hosts won five of the first 11 World Cups, but in the subsequent 11, it’s only happened once — France in 1998. This is partly because many of the more recent tournaments have been hosted by countries from outside the traditional superpowers (Qatar, Russia, South Africa, South Korea/Japan), but also because the increasing globalisation of football means alien conditions rarely flummox modern teams.France’s 1998 champions were the last hosts to win the tournament (Daniel Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)This also feeds into another old truism, which was that European teams didn’t win outside Europe: that was valid until 2014, when Germany won in Brazil. Admittedly, that is only one example, but it’s pretty clear that geography doesn’t play as much of a role in deciding who wins the World Cup as it once did.Looking at the make-up of the winning squads, a single megastar is not a particular deal-breaker either: defining one of those is subjective but can be measured in a few ways.The reigning men’s Ballon d’Or winner has never won the World Cup, for example, which is partly a consequence of how the award for the world’s best player is decided, often awarded to a key player from the winners after they have done so. In fact, there have only been a handful of players who have won the Ballon d’Or at all before winning the World Cup: from when eligibility for the award was expanded beyond European players in 1995, only Brazilians Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Argentinian Lionel Messi have done so. Before that, you can add Germans Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller to the list.Transfer fees are another measure, and the winning team has only had the most expensive player in the world twice: Paolo Rossi for Italy in 1982 and Diego Maradona with Argentina in 1986. Neymar holding the current record by such a huge distance is likely to mean that will remain true… unless Brazil triumph this summer.Interestingly, you don’t need your squad to be full of players who have won club trophies the season before: in fact, the last World Cup-winning squad to have more than one continental champion playing for them was Brazil in 1994, who had four players from Copa Libertadores holders Sao Paulo.Argentina in 2022, Spain in 2010, Italy in 2006 and West Germany in 1990 didn’t have a single continental club champion in their squads. A smattering of domestic league title holders is handy, but not crucial: Argentina last time out and Brazil in 2002 only had two domestic league title holders.It doesn’t matter if you were no good in the previous tournament. Spain were eliminated in the first knockout round in 2006, four years before their win, as were Italy in 2002 and Brazil in 1990. Brazil’s 1966 vintage went out in the group stage, before their most iconic victory in 1970. France didn’t even qualify in 1994.Fernando Torres and Spain lost in the round of 16 in 2006 before winning four years later (Michael Urban/AFP via Getty Images)How you qualified sort of matters and sort of doesn’t. No team has ever won the World Cup having gone through play-offs, but plenty have done so after shaky qualification campaigns. That 2002 Brazil team finished third in the CONMEBOL table having got through three coaches in a year, and were knocked out of the 2001 Copa America by Honduras. And then there’s Italy in 1982 and 2006, who warmed up for their moments of glory with a couple of betting scandals that put their national game in chaos.So perhaps the lesson is: preparation is overrated.Let’s eliminate a few teams.We’ll start with the holders: no team has retained the World Cup since Brazil in 1962. There are myriad reasons for this, mostly that winning teams tended to suddenly become hot at the right time, or contained a group of players who peaked at the right time — two unsustainable factors. On this basis, history can rule out Argentina this summer.It’s also not great for your prospects to be the favourites, or at least the official best team in the world. Since the FIFA rankings were introduced in 1992, the team who was ranked No 1 going into the tournament has never won it — not even Spain in 2010, who travelled to South Africa sitting at No 2, behind Brazil.On that basis, we can eliminate France too, who are top of the rankings. So that’s both of the finalists from 2022, out of the picture. Ruthless.You do have to be a good team, though. Teams have come from nowhere to win continental championships — Denmark (1992) and Greece (2004) at the Euros, Zambia at the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations, Qatar in the 2019 Asian Cup — but not at the World Cup. You need pedigree of some description.There have not been shock World Cup winners on the scale of Greece at Euro 2004 (Francois-Xavier Marit/AFP via Getty Images)The lowest-ranked champion was France, who were placed 18 in 1998, so already we’re thinning the field. On the basis that historically, the winner has come from teams ranked 2-18, but holders Argentina (No 3) are out, that leaves us with: Spain, England, Portugal, Brazil, Morocco, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, Colombia, Senegal, Mexico, the United States, Uruguay and Japan.Let’s trim another two, Mexico and the U.S., on the basis that hosts rarely win. So we’re down to 13.Regrettably, let’s also cut Senegal, Morocco and Japan, because while we’d love to see more variety, only teams from Europe and South America have ever won the World Cup.Now onto the coaches. Only one coach has ever won more than one World Cup, and that was Vittorio Pozzo with Italy in 1934 and 1938: history tells us that Didier Deschamps and Lionel Scaloni are unlikely to add a second winners’ medal to their collections, but we’ve already ruled out France and Argentina.The big thing that everyone knows is that a foreign coach has never won the World Cup: only two have ever reached the final, when Englishman George Raynor managed Sweden in 1958 and Austrian Ernst Happel was in charge of the Netherlands in 1978. Bad news then, from a historical point of view, for Brazil, England, Portugal, Belgium, Colombia and Uruguay.As far as anything else to do with the coach, there’s basically no common factor. World Cup-winning coaches have been everything from multiple domestic title-winning legends to youth coaches who stumbled into the job to playing legends who broadly led by personality. Maybe the only notable factor to consider is that Vicente del Bosque is the oldest coach to win the World Cup, at a relatively youthful 59, which would seem to rule out Ronald Koeman (63) at the Netherlands and Luis de la Fuente (64) with Spain, but let’s hold fire on those.Vicente del Bosque became the oldest coach to win the World Cup in 2010 (Andrew Yates/AFP via Getty Images)Those factors leave us with Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Croatia. They’re pretty plausible, given that they’ve all reached the final in the last four editions.From those, let’s look more closely at the squads.History suggests you need a goalscorer, with France in 1998 the exception: pretty much every other winner has had at least one striker who either scored 20-plus goals in the previous domestic season, or had some significant goalscoring numbers to their name, from Messi in 2022 and Ronaldo in 2002 to Gerd Muller in 1974 and beyond.But perhaps due to the nature of football in 2026, none of our surviving four really have a genuine goalscoring titan in their ranks. Memphis Depay is the all-time leading scorer for the Netherlands, but he hasn’t exactly been banging them in for his club side Corinthians. The leading goalscorer in Spain’s squad is Mikel Oyarzabal, who managed a respectable 15 league goals for Real Sociedad, but you’d hardly put him up there with Muller, Ronaldo and Messi.History suggests you need a decent cohort of domestic-based players in your squad. From 1930 to 1982, only three men who played outside of their home country won the World Cup, and while that was a product of the times, it’s something that has broadly held true since. All 23 of Italy’s 2006 winners plied their trade in Serie A, 20 from 23 of Spain’s 2010 heroes were based in La Liga, 16 of Germany’s in 2014 were home-based. Argentina last time out were an outlier, with just one (backup goalkeeper Franco Armani) of their 26 playing at home.Looking at the squads of our surviving four, the tallies are 17/26 for Spain, 19/26 for Germany, but just two from 26 for both Croatia and the Netherlands.Let’s look at the skipper. History says you also need a proper, copper-bottomed legend as captain — your Cafus, your Philipp Lahms, your Fabio Cannavaros — and while that sort of status is usually conferred on someone after winning a World Cup, most of these guys would qualify even if they hadn’t. Nine of the last 11 skippers to lift the trophy have more than 100 senior caps across their careers, and the two exceptions — both on 91 — were Brazil’s Dunga and Argentina’s Maradona, who still count as greats.A good captain, such as Philipp Lahm in 2014 for Germany, is essential (Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images)Among the four remaining teams, you’ve got Joshua Kimmich (109 caps), Virgil van Dijk (who could win his 100th cap in the final) and, of course, Luka Modric, who barring calamity and some truly maverick selection decisions, will nudge above 200 during the tournament. In a harsh world, this would cleave away Spain, whose leader Rodri has a relatively paltry 61 caps. But let’s sheath the cleaver for the moment, and consider the experience in the rest of the squad.Measuring this by caps is a slightly tricky one to put in a historical context, because there is so much more international football now than years ago, therefore the number of caps in a squad has gone up significantly in recent years: for example, the triumphant French team in 1998 had an average of 23 caps per player before the start of the tournament, whereas for Argentina’s winners four years ago, it was 38.5.In terms of age, the question of whether you’re better off with youth or experience has varied: of the last two winners, the average age Argentina’s 2022 champions was 28.6 years, whereas France’s in 2018 was 25.9. However, looking at recent tournaments, the sweet spot is around 27: five of the last nine winners were in this range.Spain are pretty youthful at 26.2, while the Dutch are just over 27 and Croatia are at the upper end, their average age being just under 28. Germany, however, are slap bang in the middle, with an average age before the tournament of 27.5.So what does this tell us? Like we said earlier, this is not necessarily scientific, and it may not tally with what your eyes or the metrics tell us about the actual squads, but based on this wide range of historical factors, the team that most closely fits the historical trends is… Germany.You know what they say: football is a game where you analyse nearly a century of teams, coaches and historical trends, and at the end, the Germans win.Make of this what you will. It could be nonsense. But at least you’ll have an answer for that guy in the pub.