The New Gods of the World Cup

From Tokyo to Rio, Munich to Mexico City, GQ presents its starting lineup of the most electric players to watch at Qatar 2022.

- By Roger Bennett

I once asked legendary British commentator Martin Tyler to explain what makes a footballer become a global hero. Tyler, the voice of the English game, responded instantly. "Football," he said, "is a simple game in which any player has three decisions to choose from when they take possession of the ball. Should I pass, run, or shoot?" He paused theatrically. "The greatest players just make better decisions more of the time than the merely good ones." There is no greater stage on which Tyler's theory can play out than the World Cup, the 2022 edition of which will kick off on November 20. It's the world's greatest blockbuster franchise played out live, with a projected cumulative audience of five billion. A crucible of pressure in which the mantle of greatness can be assumed in a heartbeat. One exclamation point goal can forge a generation of memories, and the choreography of feints, flicks, and flamboyance will be mimicked by millions of kids on dusty schoolyards across the world. The 2022 World Cup is guaranteed to be a singular experience, for reasons both commendable and skulduggerous. The first World Cup to be staged in the Middle East, it will be held in Qatar, a tiny, natural-gas-rich petrostate located on a finger of desert in the Persian Gulf that won the hosting duties corruptly and despite having never previously qualified for the tournament. With summer temperatures in the desert hovering at 106 degrees Fahrenheit, organizers at FIFA were forced to shift the competition from July to November, seeking cooler climes and disrupting the rhythm of the club calendar in the process. On the field, this will almost certainly be the tournament where the curtain falls on the international careers of two of the most dominant players of all time: Cristiano Ronaldo, that 37-year-old Portuguese bottle of Drakkar Noir in human form, and his archrival, 35-year-old Lionel Messi, the diminutive Argentin