FOX Sports’ Maurice Edu’s Pick to Win the 2026 World Cup Is…?

Before he would name a World Cup champion, Maurice Edu wanted to talk about the only games that matter first: the ones the United States has to win to get out of its group. It would be naive, he told the show, to daydream about a knockout matchup with Belgium or Spain or France before taking care of business.

The American group runs through three solid opponents. The US opens against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium, plays Australia in Seattle, then returns to SoFi to face Turkey. Edu likes the path to winning the group, but he kept hammering the importance of the opener. Win that first game against Paraguay, he said, and you are well on your way to advancing and to taking the group outright. All the focus, energy, and attention has to live there.

Then Edu let himself geek out. He rattled off the talent that still makes him a fan, starting with a French squad he called spoiled for choice: Kylian Mbappé alongside young PSG stars like Désiré Doué and Ousmane Dembélé. He marveled at Spain's Lamine Yamal, still a teenager and already one of the best players the sport has produced. England, he noted, will insist as always that it is coming home, armed with Harry Kane and Edu's beloved Arsenal star Bukayo Saka.

What excites him most is what a World Cup creates. It is the biggest stage in sport, Edu said, and it always produces new stars, catapulting players into a different stratosphere. Alongside the established names, the Erling Haalands and Mbappés, plus Messi and Ronaldo in their last hurrahs, there will be names nobody is discussing yet who become focal points.

On Messi specifically, Edu put on his doctor's hat and said he believes the star will be fine despite an injury, and that Argentina's squad is deep enough to manage even if he missed an early game. He called Messi the greatest player the sport has ever seen and said American fans are spoiled to watch him week to week in Major League Soccer. The defending champion, Edu noted, now plays with the rare motivation of entering a tournament as the hunted, and a competitor who hates being substituted still burns to win more.

His pick to win it all? France. Edu leaned on their depth, recalling that they lost the last final to Messi's Argentina in perhaps the greatest World Cup final ever played, the one where Mbappé scored a hat trick and still ended up on the losing side. If France wins, Edu said, Mbappé is the biggest star.

For the breakout star, though, Edu steered the answer home. He wants a new name to emerge from the US squad, whether it is Christian Pulisic cementing himself among the country's greatest, Weston McKennie carrying his club form onto the biggest platform, or a first-timer like Malik Tillman rising to the occasion. Whoever it is, Edu wants an American to capture the attention of the country, and the globe, for those six weeks.