The WombleWorld Cup - Part 1
In which every nation at the 2026 World Cup is assigned an AFC Wimbledon or Wimbledon FC, and each match is settled by a method of our choosing.
Somebody had to do it.
FIFA has expanded the World Cup to forty-eight teams and a hundred and four matches, a tournament so large it requires three host nations and a working knowledge of which time zone Guadalajara is in. The official broadcasters will cover it with supercomputers, expected-goals models, and a man in a suit gesturing at a green screen.
We have a different methodology.
Each of the forty-eight nations has been allocated a Wimbledon player, past or present, on the strength of a link. Some of these links are real. Some are not. The links are not really the priority here.
Each match is then settled not by football, which is unreliable, but by a contest of our choosing. Rock-paper-scissors. Backgammon. Who can eat the most Twiglets. The method varies game to game, and as the tournament wears on, the methods will get slower, more elaborate, and harder to defend. By the latter stages we anticipate a single frame of snooker that runs into next season.
This is sustainability in its purest form.
A note on stamina. We have completed Group A to the standard the project deserves. Groups B through L will be completed to the standard time allows. We ask you to understand that the level of detail you are about to enjoy is not, structurally speaking, repeatable across a hundred and four fixtures by an anonymous correspondent with a day job. We will get slower. We will get shorter. Somewhere around Group F the wheels will come off, and that, too, will be part of the coverage.
On, then, to Group A.
Group A
Mexico. Hosts, opening the tournament at the Estadio Azteca. Allocated Jon Main, the Conference and Ryman League goal machine of the early years, on the grounds that someone once heard he likes tequila. That is the link. We have not verified it. We are not going to. Main is in Mexico now, spiritually, and possibly in a bar.
South Africa. Open against Mexico in a repeat of the 2010 fixture. Allocated Ethan Chislett, who was born in Durban, gave us three good seasons and 123 games, and then ultimately moved to Kaizer Chiefs explicitly to chase a Bafana Bafana call-up. The call-up has not come. Chislett is not in the squad. He is in the country, in the league, doing everything that was asked of him, and watching the World Cup happen around him like a man who RSVP’d to a wedding and was seated in the car park. We feel this one. We feel it deeply.
South Korea. Allocated Will Nightingale, on the grounds that he spent (almost) his entire Korea at Wimbledon. One man, one club. In at the age of eight. Senior debut off the bench against Carlisle, man of the match in his first start, Player of the Year in 2019, captain, and the man who rose highest to head in the first competitive goal in front of supporters at the new Plough Lane. A legend. Until we released him.
Czechia. Took the scenic route to North America, beating Ireland and Denmark on penalties, which is the single most Wimbledon way to reach a World Cup we have ever encountered. Allocated Josef Bursik, eight years in our academy, a genuine Czech passport, and a grandfather who was a decorated tank commander, escaped a maximum-security prison, and has a better backstory than the entire current Czech midfield. We checked. It is all true. We were as surprised as you are.
Group A: The Results
Mexico v South Africa, settled by a penalty shoot-out taken after closing time.
Main against Chislett. A striker against a midfielder, which should favour Main, except that Main had committed fully to the tequila bit and arrived at the spot in no condition to find it. Chislett, sober, motivated, and carrying the emotional weight of a man trying to prove a point to a selection committee that was not watching, scored all five.
Winner: South Africa. Chislett wheeled away to celebrate in front of the South African bench. The South African bench had not noticed. Of course it hadn’t.
South Korea v Czechia, settled by who has the better grandfather.
A new metric, introduced specifically for this fixture and never used again. Bursik entered his grandfather: tank commander, Czech War Cross, Order of the Red Star, fourteen-year sentence, a Steve McQueen-style escape from a castle on a hill. Nightingale, a one-club centre-half from South London, said his grandad “was a hard worker”. It was not close.
Winner: Czechia. There was no answer to the tank.
Czechia v South Africa, settled by who can eat the most Twiglets.
Bursik against Chislett. Bursik, a goalkeeper, approached the bowl with the focus of a man used to one-on-ones. Chislett, still carrying the quiet grief of an uncalled-up international, ate forty-one Twiglets without appearing to taste any of them, stopped, looked into the middle distance, and asked nobody in particular whether the selectors had been in touch. They had not. He ate nine more out of spite.
Winner: South Africa. A win fuelled entirely by being overlooked. We are starting to worry about him.
Mexico v South Korea, settled by who can name the most former Wimbledon players.
Main, sobering up, got to four before naming Robin Bedford. Nightingale, who had played alongside roughly half the list and been coached by the other half, named forty-one without pausing, then named the academy intake of 2009, then quietly named himself.
Winner: South Korea. A one-club man knows where the bodies are buried. He helped bury several.
South Africa v South Korea, settled by who can ride a Lime bike the longest while blindfolded.
The marquee fixture, and the only one anybody filmed. Chislett, blindfolded, rode with the doomed commitment of a man who has stopped expecting things to go his way and was therefore unsurprised when he hit the kerb. Nightingale, a centre-half, simply refused to fall over, on the grounds that he has been falling over his entire professional identity for a decade, and enough is enough. He rode in a slow, defiant circle for eleven minutes until the battery died, which is the most Will Nightingale way to win anything we can conceive of.
Winner: South Korea. Chislett, fittingly, never saw it coming.
Czechia v Mexico, beer versus tequila. Jon Main’s time to shine.
We had been promising Main a stage all tournament. Here it was. Bursik, sensible and Championship-fit, brought a beer. No, not San Miguel, but a nice Czech pilsner. Main brought tequila and the unshakeable energy of a man whose link to Mexico was forged entirely on a rumour we refused to verify. The contest was never explained, scored, or formally judged. Main was simply, by universal agreement, having the best time of anyone in the group, and was awarded the win on vibes.
Winner: Mexico. Jon Main opened the bottle in celebration.
Group A: Final Standings
South Africa: 6 points. Robbed slightly less
South Korea: 6 points. Would not fall over
Czechia: 3 points. Best grandfather
Mexico: 3 points. Tequila
A note on the table. South Africa and South Korea finish level on six points, and under FIFA’s own tie-break rules this should go to head-to-head, where South Korea won on the Lime bike and would therefore top the group. We have instead awarded first place to South Africa, on the grounds that Chislett has spent three games being overlooked by a selection committee, a celebrating bench, and the entire concept of justice, and deserved at least one thing. The drawing of lots was available to us. We chose not to use it.
So Chislett wins Group A. He is finally top of something, ahead of a club legend and a man with a tank in the family, on a combination of Twiglets and spite. It is not a Bafana call-up. It is, by the standards of his summer, very close.
South Korea go through second, a one-club man undone only by the technicality of having played fairly. Czechia and Mexico are eliminated, the tank and the tequila both falling at the group stage, which we consider the correct weighting of priorities. The reader will note that the host nation has gone out in the first round of its own World Cup. We consider this a triumph of the format.
On, then, to Group B.
Group B
We will get to Group B.
WombleWorld
Groups B to L have been added to the list of things this publication has promised and will deliver in due course, and will arrive around the same time that the DTB release the unredacted minutes from their last meeting.