World Cup: Who wins, who loses?

At the opening ceremony at the Estadio Azteca, even before any player entered the pitch, the world witnessed Labubu, two enormous pointy-eared dolls from Pop Mart, a Chinese toy brand, positioned at the center of Mexico's soccer shrine. Hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide saw a Chinese emblem before spotting any national team. That moment is what many refer to as the Chinese people's "win without playing football."

But perhaps that is only a half-victory for the giant, when we ask the opposite question.

No Chinese team is in the tournament, yet China is present in every layer of the 2026 World Cup's operation: Lenovo provides computing infrastructure for all 16 stadiums, Hisense is the official screen for VAR rooms, Tencent Cloud handles streaming for dozens of markets, and Alibaba Cloud supports global broadcast signal distribution. Three Chinese brands—Lenovo, Mengniu, and Hisense—have poured over 500 million USD into FIFA's sponsorship system, ranking second only to the US in number of official commercial partners.

From an economic and technological perspective, that is an impressive achievement. But from a football perspective, it paints a picture of a nation of 1.4 billion, the world's second-largest economy, sitting and watching others play.

The last time China participated in the World Cup was 2002, a tournament they entered indirectly thanks to an expansion when the event first came to Asia. Because South Korea and Japan qualified automatically as co-hosts, Asia gained a fifth slot, and at that time China was among the continent's top six teams. But since then, 24 years have passed. Six World Cups. Not a single appearance.

This is not a lack of money. Not a lack of talented players. It is the story of a football nation that lost its ambition to rise at the very moment it needed it most. While every other sector in China—from technology to the economy—keeps advancing, Chinese football has regressed, even though that first World Cup appearance triggered massive investment in the billion-people football community.

Failing to seize the golden moment. The cost of this contradiction is most visible during World Cups like this one: your logo is everywhere, but your team is absent—even though the number of Asian slots has doubled.

So let's imagine: if China were on the pitch, with such commercial and media influence, with 289 million domestic football fans watching, the value would multiply many times over. Not 500 million USD in sponsorships, but billions of dollars from the resonance effect between the team on the field and the national brand. The World Cup has expanded to 48 teams, wide enough for China to qualify if they maintained that ambition. But if ambition is not sustained, opportunities become meaningless.

From another angle: Jordan stepped onto the field for the first time in history, after 40 years of qualifying attempts. Uzbekistan put Central Asian football on the global map for the first time. These two newcomers suffered heavy defeats, but that is nothing to be ashamed of.

Because something more important than the score happened: they were there. They stood in the tunnel alongside European and South American teams. They heard the opening music, looked up at the packed stands, and understood that the football they had played in tiny regional competitions for years was now placed on the same stage as Mbappé and Haaland.

More importantly: they know that with the 48-team format, this doesn't have to be their only time. Asia now has more than nine slots, enough for Middle Eastern and Central Asian teams to make the World Cup regularly if they maintain their form. That's something previous generations from Jordan or Uzbekistan never had—the door was too narrow. Now they know: as long as they keep wanting it, things will surely get better. They've also learned from Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Australia that if you want to win at the World Cup, the first step is to try to attend as often as possible.

So the way Jordan and Uzbekistan played in their first matches showed comfort, no fear, no desperate attempt to avoid losing. Losing on the World Cup stage is the most expensive lesson that no training academy can provide, and it will follow the young players from Jordan and Uzbekistan back home, becoming the foundation for the next generation. Just don't follow China's path after the 2002 World Cup.

Could this be the lesson for Vietnamese football? Not yet—it's not impossible. What matters is to avoid a break in both expertise and ambition. The World Cup dream is not a destination to reach once and then stop. It must be a journey built to last. The expanded World Cup is a golden opportunity, but that opportunity only comes to those truly ready—rooted in a long-term mindset, sustained across generations of leaders, generations of players, and generations of fans.