So, here we are. Another handover of the baton. Another generational shift. Pele to Maradona. Maradona to Ronaldo Nazario, Zinedine Zidane and Ronaldinho. Then, the Messi-Cristiano Ronaldo era.
Would it ever end, football fans wondered. The posters. The chants. The jerseys and the scarves. The bragging rights. The sky blue and white versus the bright red and green. At this World Cup, it finally did. Long live the GOATs, the GOATs are dead.
All good things, I guess, do eventually come to an end. But not football, no. The beautiful game has continued to evolve in cycles. Every four years, the planet stops for the games that mean the most. The World Cup arrives. Forget club rivalries. This is a matter of national pride. Emotions run high. Some heroes deliver. Some disappoint. There are heartbreaks aplenty. Look at Modric.
“Luka Modric is the beauty of football. He is my pride because I took him to Real Madrid when nobody believed that he was a player for Real Madrid.”
Jose Mourinho can be a scrooge when it comes to praise. But when he spoke about Luka Modric in 2024, you knew he meant it. As the dust settles on another World Cup, Modric is one of many last hurrahs on the biggest stage.
The Croatian made his World Cup debut in 2006 and has since participated in every major tournament Croatia qualified for. Twenty years and five World Cups later, the 40-year-old knew it was time. He came ever so close to lifting the trophy in 2018 but was beaten in the final fair and square by a French unit equipped with superstars in every corner of the football field. He won the Golden Ball that year. Just not the golden trophy.
It’s not just Modric. From Manuel Neuer to Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo to the enigma that is Lionel Messi, it was curtains—a final goodbye—for a generation of players that dominated everything from game covers to career statistics on Wikipedia pages for close to two decades.
As the 2026 World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico wound down to an end, it was evident that the world of football has now embraced its next cadre of superstars: arise Sir Jude Bellingham, Monsieur Mbappe, El Nino Lamine Yamal and Erling Braut Haaland.
Spain’s La Liga is now home to some of the biggest stars in world football. None bigger than Kylian Mbappe. Yes, the 26-year-old fell short of taking France to ultimate glory this year. But a World Cup winners medal from 2018 remains in his locker. No one’s taking that away from him. He singlehandedly kept France in the reckoning in the 2022 final in Qatar, only to be bested by a Messi fairytale. At this year’s semi-final, France underperformed against eventual champions Spain.
But Mbappe still had a campaign worth noting. He entered the tournament with 12 World Cup goals to his name. He finished with 10 more, making him the all-time top goalscorer in the history of the World Cup, overtaking Messi, and the first male player to reach double figures in a single World Cup since Gerd Müller for West Germany in 1970.
You never get tired of Mbappe’s Olympian-like strides or his ferocious pace. One moment he is in his own half. Seconds later, he is at the edge of the opponent’s 18-yard-box, planting the football in the net with surgical accuracy. If anything, this World Cup was a reminder that there is no end to his scoring abilities: inside the box, 25 yards away, scruffy goals, a first-time finish with his weaker foot.
Against Sweden in the round of 32, Mbappe was god-like. France played their best football in the tournament against the Swedes, with Mbappe and Michael Olise at the center of it. There was a telepathic feel to their movement. Olise picked the passes. Mbappe would be at the end of them. A few stepovers, a slight feint and swivel of the hips and a Swedish player on his backside—cue another Mbappe goal. It was, as Peter Drury commentated, “football from the heavens.”
Mbappe now stands at a crucial juncture in his career, with two new voices in the dugout to contend with. Mourinho at Real Madrid and Zinedine Zidane as the new coach of France. His journey to the 2030 World Cup couldn’t be more riveting.
Mbappe’s Real Madrid team mate Jude Bellingham is equally if not more heavenly. So good is the man from Stourbridge, UK, that his first club Birmingham City retired the #22 jersey when he left for Borussia Dortmund in Germany in 2020. The club said they wanted to remember one of their own and “inspire” the next generation. Bellingham was just 17.
His remarkable rise in football only got better at the 2026 World Cup, finishing as England’s highest scorer in the tournament, even ahead of striker Harry Kane.
He is England and Real Madrid’s answer to Zidane. It is also fitting that he wears the #5 jersey at Madrid, once worn by Zizou himself. Like Zidane, he glides past challenges. In the third place match against France, Bellingham sealed an England win with a solo goal that bamboozled the French defence. He kept running and never stopped.
Exactly as tall as Zidane, Bellingham builds a head of steam on the pitch. He looks like he is not too mobile. That’s the trap. Before you know, he arrives late near the far post with a diving header or a despairing lunge for a goal-line clearance to keep his team in the game. Jude is everywhere. At just 23, he has already represented England in three major tournaments. They can build around him easily for the next decade.
Then there’s Lamine Yamal, born in 2007, the infant who was bathed by Messi for a UNICEF charity shoot and came back to trump the greatest player on the planet in 2026.
It is poetic in terms of footballing trajectory that Yamal is exactly where Messi was when he was 19: wearing the colours of FC Barcelona and possessing a wand of a left foot.
Born to a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea, Yamal is one of the most beautiful, multicultural stories in football. Many players from Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy have tried to be the next Lionel Messi. Yamal is different. A menace on the right flank, you cannot predict what he does next with the ball at this feet: a trivela, a curling finish into the top corner, a pass no one else can see. Very Messi-esque. They both came face to face at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey but were muted as a solitary extra time goal decided the final in Spain’s favour. Yamal can have another go in 2030, Messi won’t.
While Yamal struggled with fitness issues this time out, he already has the coveted World Cup winning medal that Cristiano Ronaldo never did and one that Messi had to wait till 35 to get a hold of. If he keeps his injuries and discipline in check, Yamal is capable of spearheading Spain for many World Cups to come.
There’s also a tender innocence behind the fearless Spanish player. One that was visible whenever he was with his younger brother, Keyne, who went viral during the World Cup for his infectious celebrations in the stands. You know who else went viral around that time? A Norwegian called Erling.
“Who is this Norwegian guy with long hair that keeps popping up on my Instagram feed?”
Erling Haaland—that’s his name; one that blew up on social media thanks to the World Cup. The subject of memes, scorer of goals, keeper of designer bags and a Snapchat sensation.
The Premier League had plenty of representation at the World Cup but no other player matched the hype or performances of Manchester City’s Norwegian striker Erling Haaland. Norway entered the tournament as the dark horses and went on a dream run till the quarter finals, stunning the likes of Brazil along the way. Haaland did what he does best – score goals. From headers to long-range finishes, he outmuscled and traumatised veteran players into retirement.
His goal-scoring aside, #Haaland reached far and beyond the football field. Particularly on Instagram, where he went from 40 million followers to close to 76 million now. The unfiltered Norwegian comes with a sense of humour too: that taxidermy raccoon said it all.
Haaland has a long-term contract at Manchester City, where he is destined to break more records but Norway can count on him to deliver again when the World Cup returns.
There are, of course, other young stars that took this World Cup by storm. Yan Diomande, the 19-year-old winger from Ivory Coast, started a bidding war between Real Madrid and Paris Saint Germain. Pau Cubarsi, 19, commanded the Spanish defence well beyond his years as they lifted the World Cup. Barcelona have yet another gem in their ranks. Ayyoub Bouaddi’s performances from Morocco shined more light on the marvels that come from African football. He is just 18.
Let’s be clear. There will never be a player like Lionel Messi ever again. There was never meant to be. He is a monument. A rare talisman that sits behind the glass, capable of magic on the green blades of grass. We will always remember how Messi lived his dream and climbed the ultimate mountain in Qatar that night in 2022—a World Cup winner, finally, at 35.
Mbappe lived that dream four years earlier in Russia. A World Cup-winner at 19. Yamal now lives and breathes as the custodian of that Holy Grail. A World Cup-winner with Spain at just 19. Surely, it can only get better from here for this lot.
Kylian Mbappe took to Instagram recently to thank fans that continued to support France through their World Cup campaign, even in defeat. “This World Cup has come to an end but the story goes on. There will be other matches, other nights in summer and in winter when we’ll all come together over this same game, with the same undiminished excitement. Our journey together is far from over.”
Listen to Kylian, you football fanatics. Bring back the scarves. The colours of your liking. They have only changed, not vanished. Rehearse those chants again. It’s four years to 2030 but brace yourself. For the charge of the young brigade has already begun.
To read more stories from Esquire India's August 2026 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.