gareth southgate has been accused of being too loyal mainly to harry maguire and not loyal enough principally to trent alexanderarnold both are on the team this time but the real surprise was the inclusion of james maddison the leicester city playmaker who has been studiously ignored for most of southgates tenurekey question the suspicion in england is that southgate is too cautious to make use of a talented generation of attacking players and that englands dreams will be undone by a lack of either ambition or selfconfidence he must weigh the rewards of cutting loose against the risk of exposing his teams vulnerabilitiesiranpedigree iran has missed only two world cups since 1998 establishing itself as one of asias four great powers it has never made it past the group stage winning only two of its 15 games but this iteration has realistic ambitions of ending that hoodoo thanks largely to its attacking pair of sardar azmoun and mehdi taremithe coach welltraveled portuguese coach carlos queiroz returned earlier this year after the dismissal of dragan skocic the serbian who had masterminded irans qualification queiroz oversaw irans world cup campaigns in 2014 and 2018 this time he is confident he can get the country to the knockout stagekey question irans preparations for the tournament have been overshadowed by the protests sweeping the country in the aftermath of the midseptember death in police custody of mahsa amini and a number of players have risked breaching team rules by posting statements of support for the dissidents it is not clear at this point if everyone in iran would regard success as something to celebrateunited statespedigree after an untimely intermission the united states is back the humiliating failure to qualify for the 2018 tournament after an unbroken streak stretching back to 1990 means that coach gregg berhalters team has almost no experience of playing at a world cup whether that is good or bad remains to be seenambition what the us lacks in international experience this generation of players makes up for in exposure to europes major leagues and indeed the champions league christian pulisic might be the golden boy but the likes of tyler adams brenden aaronson and gio reyna have all earned their spurs a place in the last 16 should be feasiblekey question the most obvious concern is who exactly will score a more pressing inquiry might be whether berhalters decision to give youth its day is prioritizing the future at the expense of the present the us will be among the youngest teams at the world cup the hope may be that pays dividends on home soil in 2026walespedigree wales has waited 64 years for this moment the country had not qualified for a world cup since 1958 but it has been on the rise for the better part of a decade reaching the semifinals of the european championship in 2016 and then returning to the tournament five years laterthe last hurrah the two key figures