For two decades the World Cup developed a nasty habit. The team that lifted the trophy kept turning up four years later and falling flat on its face before the knockouts even started. France, Italy, Spain and Germany all fell at the first hurdle to the shock of millions watching around the world.
Four defending champions across five tournaments crashing out before the knockouts had even begun, a pattern that had no precedent in the long, illustrious history of the tournament. Was the 21st Century bringing with it some kind of ‘champions curse’?
For those superstitious enough to believe in such things, Argentina could be next to fall victim to this dread curse. So here’s the question worth actually digging into: is the curse real, and if it is, should anyone betting on the 2026 World Cup be worried about it?
My answer is that the curse, in the form everyone remembers it, is basically dead. The new tournament format killed it, and Argentina’s group buried whatever was left.
What the “Curse” Actually Was
Strip away the spooky framing and the pattern is just a run of early exits. Have a look at the four shocks that built the legend.
Notice something about that table. Three of the four didn’t just fail to advance, they finished dead last in a four-team group. France couldn’t put the ball in the net once. Germany, the most stunning of the lot, came bottom of a group with Sweden, Mexico and South Korea to suffer their first Group Stage exit since 1938.
Only Spain went out from third place, and even they were mathematically gone after losing their first two matches by a combined 7 goals to 1. These weren’t narrow misses, but rather total collapses on the biggest stage.
That distinction matters more than it looks, and it’s the whole reason the curse is about to lose its teeth.
The format change does the heavy lifting
Here’s the part that rewrites the entire conversation. The 2026 World Cup runs 48 teams in 12 groups of four, and 32 of them survive the group stage. The top two from every group go through automatically, and the eight best third-placed sides fill out the rest of a brand new Round of 32.
Under the old 32-team setup, only half the field made it out of the groups. Finish third and you were on a plane home. Now? Two thirds of the entire tournament advances. A defending champion would have to finish bottom of its group, or third with one of the four worst third-place records across all twelve groups, to actually go out.
Run the old curse cases through the new rules and the spell breaks. France ’02, Italy ’10 and Germany ’18 all finished bottom, so they’d still be eliminated, no format can save a team that loses to everyone. But the safety net catches exactly the kind of wobble that used to end a title defense: a champion who stumbles to third but isn’t truly awful now lives to fight in the Round of 32.
The format doesn’t rescue disasters. It rescues bad-but-not-catastrophic, which is where most “cursed” holders actually sit before things spiral.
Then there’s Argentina’s group
If the format makes an early exit unlikely for any holder, the draw makes it almost laughable for this one. Argentina landed in Group J alongside Algeria, Austria and Jordan. No second heavyweight. No European giant lurking as a banana skin. Austria are the only side with a real pulse, and even they’re a step below the level that should trouble a top seed.
For Argentina to go out, they’d need to lose two of these three. Picture that. The reigning world champions, second in the FIFA rankings, dropping matches to two of Algeria, Austria and Jordan. It’s not impossible in the way that nothing in football is impossible. But it would rank among the biggest group-stage shocks the tournament has ever produced, and you’d be betting against both the talent gap and a format that’s actively trying to keep big teams alive. Scaloni did the obligatory “there are no easy opponents” routine after the draw. He has to say that. The bracket says otherwise.
So where’s the actual risk?
Here’s where I’d pump the brakes on my own argument, because “the curse is dead” can quietly turn into “Argentina are safe,” and those are two completely different claims.
The curse everyone remembers was about early exits. That version is gone. But notice what the expanded format does on the other end: it adds a whole extra knockout round and lets a swarm of third-placed sides into the bracket. More games, more single-elimination 90-minute coin flips, more chaos waiting in the later rounds. The tournament got longer and messier for everyone, Argentina included.
And that’s exactly where this particular squad is vulnerable. Messi turns 39 during the tournament. The spine that won in Qatar is another four years older, and the depth behind it isn’t what it was. Argentina won’t be felled in the group stage by Jordan.
The thing that ends their defense, if anything does, is a knockout tie against a fresher, faster side somewhere in the back half, the type of game where one mistake or one moment of fatigue settles it. Looking at the draw, the champions’ most likely opponent in the Round of 32 are a Uruguay side who already beat them once in the South American qualifiers.
It’s worth remembering the deeper number too: no holder has retained the World Cup since Brazil in 1962. France came closest in modern times, reaching the 2022 final before losing to, fittingly, Argentina. Retaining the thing is just brutally hard, and the format change does nothing to help with that part. It only removes the embarrassing early-exit trapdoor.
The betting takeaway
Don’t price in a literal curse, and don’t touch any “Argentina to exit the group stage” market expecting value off the curse narrative. The format makes that outcome a long shot, and the soft draw makes it longer still.
The real edge sits later. If you’re skeptical of an aging Argentina, fade them in the outright market or the latter knockout rounds, not the group. That’s where the new format actually raises the danger, and where the holders’ age profile bites.
The champions’ curse made for great copy. Four holders in a row going home early felt like fate. But it was always more variance than voodoo, a short streak of aging squads regressing at the worst possible moment. Now the format has pulled the trapdoor out from under it, and Argentina drew about the gentlest path a defending champion could hope for. The curse, as we knew it, doesn’t get a 2026 chapter. Whether Argentina lift it again is a different story entirely, and that one gets decided in July, not June.
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