Football predictions for 2026: Man Utd being actually good, Trump smelting the World Cup and Salt Bae's return
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Nick Miller
Bielsa back at Leeds? VAR ruining the World Cup final? Lampard replacing Tuchel? Look forward to all this and more in the next 12 months...
A new year is upon us, just like that.
For those of us still just about easing into the old one, this is all quite alarming and whiplash-inducing, but we’ve checked the calendars and 2026 is apparently here.
It’s going to be quite a year in football. The World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States will dominate things, but there will be domestic titles, continental ones, a couple of transfer windows, some ill-advised managerial appointments, some awful signings, some people will say some truly stupid things and plenty more stuff to keep us all occupied.
So here’s an occasionally serious look at what we might expect from football in the 12 months ahead.
We’re actually going to get a real, multi-team title race
Yes indeed. This is a Premier League season that is moving at warp speed, so things can and will change at a ferocious pace. For the first few months of the campaign, it looked like Arsenal would just stride away with it, but recently they have wobbled. Manchester City have looked imperious in some moments but limp at others. Chelsea’s fortunes have fluctuated. Aston Villa are still up there, somehow. Liverpool? Who knows.
The point is that for a proper title race, with more than two teams in it, you need sides that are really good but flawed enough that they won’t run away with it. And that’s what we have. Maybe one will pull clear of the pack, most likely Arsenal, but by the looks of things at the moment, this could be one for the ages.
Unai Emery’s Villa have been challenging Arsenal and City (Harry Murphy – AVFC/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images)
We still won’t get the verdict on Manchester City’s 115 charges
At various points over the past year or so, there have been hints that it was close. ‘This week, we’re hearing’. ‘Potentially the end of this month, reports suggest’. ‘It’s looking like the autumn now, sources tell us’.
And still we wait.
Perhaps we will always be left waiting for the verdict over Manchester City’s incredibly complex set of charges, which a few people do understand, a large number pretend they understand but a lot of us simply do not understand at all. It seems that we are now in a perpetual state of waiting, of “…next week, it will be next week”, and perhaps we will just never know.
Donald Trump will smelt the World Cup and turn it into a solid gold bust of his own head
Do you think there’s anything that, if Donald Trump asked for it, Gianni Infantino would say no to?
Move a World Cup game away from a designated host city he doesn’t like. Change the name of FIFA to Trump. Ask to hold the World Cup trophy for a bit. Ask to keep the World Cup trophy for a bit. Ask to keep the World Cup trophy permanently. Ask if he can smelt it and have it reshaped into a solid gold bust of his own head.
You’d like to think that the last bit isn’t plausible, that even Trump wouldn’t demand such a thing and that if he did then Infantino wouldn’t allow it. But then again, you never know.
There is a serious point here: at some stage, there was an argument that it was a sensible thing for the president of FIFA to have a good relationship with the president of one of the 2026 World Cup’s three host nations, but it’s gone way beyond the mere schmoozing by now.
What will Trump demand? And will Infantino say no?
Presidents Trump and Infantino grew closer in 2025 (Tasos Katopodis – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
VAR will absolutely ruin a big moment at the World Cup
This will be the third World Cup at which VAR has been present, and for the most part, it has behaved itself. There hasn’t really been a mistake on the level of that Tottenham vs Liverpool game from a couple of seasons ago, and it hasn’t really made its presence known.
But there’s a big one coming. I can sense it.
I feel like one of those seismologists who can anticipate an earthquake months before it happens. There will be a colossal mistake in a very big game — hey, possibly the final itself — that will entirely spoil the whole event.
It’s the natural conclusion of VAR’s entire existence, and you’d like to think such an incident would inspire some sort of existential reassessment of the whole thing… but it probably still won’t.
World Cup games will also be played in Canada and Mexico
Just in case you had forgotten.
Salt Bae will pop up again
You know when you see a spider in your house, but it scuttles behind a cabinet or the sofa or something — it was better when you could see the spider, wasn’t it? Sure, you might not like the spider, but at least if it was out in the open you could see it, and you knew where it was.
That’s sort of what it feels like when you haven’t seen Salt Bae at a football event for a little while: sure, his obnoxious, overfamiliar presence was irritating, but at least you knew where he was, and he wasn’t planning something dreadful, like strutting onto the pitch, or sprinkling salt onto Kylian Mbappe’s head.
He’s been quiet for a while, not really seen at a top-level football game since the 2024 Champions League final… so he’s due one. All I’ll say is that the Manhattan branch of Nusr-Et is only nine miles away from MetLife Stadium, the venue for the 2026 World Cup final…
Salt Bae at the 2022 World Cup final… (Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Frank Lampard will be England coach by the end of the year
At the time of writing, Frank Lampard is breezily leading Coventry City to an inevitable promotion to the Premier League, which is fairly remarkable considering they were two points above the Championship’s relegation zone when he took over there halfway through last season.
Thomas Tuchel is England’s head coach until after the World Cup ends next July. He has hinted at the possibility of being open to staying for longer, but realistically — whatever happens in the tournament — he will probably be gone.
New England bosses are usually a reaction to the last guy, so Tuchel’s successor will definitely be English, and if the World Cup doesn’t go well, then they will probably need to be someone with a decent bit of history with the England team, a name that we all know.
Step forward Lampard, whose stock will be high, and while it might be a tough call to leave Coventry having taken them back to the Premier League for the first time in 25 years, he’s an incredibly ambitious manager. So when a nation turns its lonely eyes to Frank, he may struggle to resist.
From Coventry boss to England manager for Lampard? (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
Chloe Kelly will score an implausibly important goal, somehow
Chloe Kelly is one of the more recognisable footballers in the country, largely because of her assorted exploits with England: she’s been at the heart of essentially every big moment they’ve had over the past three or four years: the extra-time winner in the Euro 2022 final, the winning penalty in the Finalissima as the European champions beat South American counterparts Brazil, the winning penalty against Nigeria in the round of 16 at the 2023 World Cup, the winning goal in their Euro 2025 semi-final and then the winning penalty in the final’s shootout.
But Kelly is an extremely weird footballer in that she has these colossal moments, the centre of the action when it really matters, which is totally at odds with her day-to-day career. She hasn’t been an automatic starter for Arsenal this season. It’s a bit like a band spending most of their time doing open-mic spots here and there, but then every year or so selling out the Hollywood Bowl.
England’s women don’t have a major tournament this year, and Arsenal women’s campaign isn’t shaping up to be one that will feature lots of big-ticket games. But somehow, at some point, Kelly will sniff out some sort of massive moment to make her own.
I don’t know how she does it… but she does.
Wolves will get precisely 12 points
Increasingly, it feels like Derby County’s 11-point season in 2007-08 is one of football’s great unbreakable records. Many have ‘tried’. Southampton gave it a good go last season, but ultimately fell short, wheezing over the line with 12.
Wolves are the candidates this time around, displaying the admirable levels of incompetence and hopelessness that typically make for a good candidate to dip below the magic mark.
But as previous terrible teams have shown, you can almost get beyond 11 points by accident. Which is how it will be for Wolves, who may get to around March time within sight of lowering the total, even threatening single figures, but they’ll eventually get past 11, and Derby’s legacy will live on for another year.
There is one aim for Wolves over the second half of the season (Darren Staples / AFP via Getty Images)
Marcelo Bielsa will return to Leeds
Things don’t seem to be going swimmingly for Marcelo Bielsa as head coach of Uruguay’s national team. Leeds are, despite their recent good results, still among the favourites to be relegated this season. The chances are they will have a managerial vacancy in 2026.
It’s all pointing to one very emotional reunion.
Manchester United will be legitimately good
Look, we’ve all been burned before. Every time you think they might turn the corner, they do something stupid. Their capacity for making the wrong decisions at a crucial inflection point is unrivalled. Anyone deluded enough to think that it’s going to be different this time invariably ends up looking like a buffoon. But hear me out: it might be different this time.
Manchester United have actually looked pretty good at some points recently. Matheus Cunha, Mason Mount, Bruno Fernandes, Bryan Mbeumo, Casemiro, Amad — all good! Senne Lammens looks solid! Lisandro Martinez is back! Benjamin Sesko will probably come good at… some point!
Sure, there are some problems to iron out, but the big prediction for 2026 is that United will actually be actively, genuinely, legitimately good.
