What about England? We get to this moment before every major tournament when the jingoism begins to kick into gear.It always starts slowly. Sixty years of hurt and all that. And then they go and beat an ageing Croatian team and the hype becomes inescapable.Declan Rice is the key man for England. But only if he is encouraged to play his natural game, that had so much to do with Arsenal winning the Premier League. If Rice is restricted to an overly defensive midfield role, as was the case under Gareth Southgate, England could get stuck in their own heads again. Thomas Tuchel, to my mind, has made one glaring error in his squad selection. I understand why Phil Foden and Trent Alexander-Arnold were not picked on reputation. Both players have had poor seasons at Manchester City and Real Madrid. The World Cup is not the time to be trading on past exploits (see Argentina below).Leaving out Cole Palmer can be bracketed in the same category as Foden and Alexander-Arnold. He’s had a forgettable few months for Chelsea but Tuchel’s possible error is he appears to have selected a starting XI and shadow team within his 26-man group.Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze can fill the number 10 role if Jude Bellingham goes down but Palmer would have ensured that England did not lose any X-Factor in such a scenario.Tuchel is so single minded that he may have missed a trick. I do see what he is trying to do. By excluding Bellingham from the October qualifiers, even though he had returned from a shoulder injury in La Liga, he warned everyone that nobody is guaranteed a call up. Rogers and Elliot Anderson are more coachable players than the stars he overlooked. Tuchel can dictate his strategy to them without any resistance.Leaving out Cole Palmer from the England squad is a possible error by Tuchel. Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images Still, come July and the knockout rounds, it will be baking hot in Mexico City, Miami, Atlanta and New Jersey. That is England’s likely path to glory. Palmer seemed unbothered by the heat during last summer’s Club World Cup. He knows how to slow the game down in sweltering conditions.And just like Mexico 1986 and USA 1994, that’s how this tournament will unfold. That’s why my favoured team is Spain, not France. Talent-wise there is nothing between them and while doubts circle, Lamine Yamal’s fitness and Rodri is not the same player he was before his injury, I am coloured by what we witnessed at Euro 2024.[ The World Cup is a deathless carnival of garbage, a dictators’ masquerade ball. Can’t wait for itOpens in new window ]It’s the ability to hold the ball and kill games that makes Spain so irresistible.Ecuador are primed to surprise the football world. They have not lost a game since travelling to Brazil in September 2024. Their unbeaten streak has been built upon an airtight defence that kept 12 clean sheets from their last 18 matches. It helps to have centre halves of the calibre of PSG’s Willian Pacho and Arsenal’s Piero Hincapié with Moisés Caicedo cleaning up in midfield.Germany, now Jamal Musiala is back, are also contenders but Argentina look a shadow of their World Cup winning team from four years ago. There are too many questions around key players like Alexis Mac Allister, Enzo Fernández, Cristian Romero and Rodrigo De Paul, who followed Lionel Messi to Inter Miami.The MLS standard suits Messi, who has been in phenomenal form for a 38-year-old.It helps Ecuador to have centre halves of the calibre of PSG’s Willian Pacho. Photograph: Xavier Laine/Getty Images Maybe, like in 2022, Argentina will grow into the tournament. Julian Alvarez is the key man, coming off a sensational season for Atletico Madrid when he scored 10 goals in the Champions League. After Qatar’s failure to produce a competitive team four years ago, there was an onus on the three co-hosts to get their acts together. US media had a pop at Pochettino for not contacting the players he did not select for his final 26-man squad. Photograph: John Dorton/USSF/Getty Images Canada had been shaping into the best team in the region but the fitness of their star players, Alphonso Davies and Moïse Bombito, could derail the campaign.The USA under Mauricio Pochettino look like a decent side with European-based players like Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie in midfield while Christian Pulisic can play off Monaco striker Folarin Balogun.The US media had a pop at Pochettino for not contacting the players he did not select for his final 26-man squad. Poch went for a classic Giovanni Trapattoni response: “If I didn’t make the squad, I wouldn’t want to hear from the manager.”Trap did text me before Euro 2012. I had been injured. But that is all you need. Treat everyone the same. The fallout from Tuchel’s conversation with Harry Maguire over his exclusion from the England squad shows that the manager cannot win.[ World Cup podcast: Paul Howard, Kevin Kilbane and Malachy Clerkin preview the tournamentOpens in new window ]Mexico will take some stopping. Steadily, Javier Aguirre has shorn up the defence with Fulham’s Raúl Jiménez up top and 17-year-old Gilberto Mora looking like the real deal.The Azteca, with all its history, is the ultimate 12th man. I think every football fan wants to see Mexico welcome Tuchel’s England back to the scene of the greatest crime against English football when Diego Maradona leaped higher than Peter Shilton in 1986.Did I mention the heat? It will be a factor.