Alexi Lalas presents the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the film “Summer of 94”
American soccer legend Alexi Lalas joins “Fox & Friends” to discuss the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Lalas highlights the cultural importance of the event and discusses the American team from the 1994 World Cup. Fox Sports announces a $250,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, matched by Fox Corporation, aimed at developing grassroots football.
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There is no clear favorite for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but if you ask Fox Sports analyst Alexi Lalas who he thinks will lift the trophy at the end of the tournament, he will give you an answer.
“I don’t care who wins as long as it’s not England,” he said Wednesday at Fox Sports’ media day for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in New York. “I can accept a lot of things happening this summer, but one thing I can’t is for England to come to our shores, on the 250th anniversary of what I consider the greatest country in the world, and win a World Cup.
“If you think they’re insufferable now, could you imagine they came and won this World Cup and it’s coming back across our country. I can’t have that, so can anyone but England.”
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Fox Sports soccer analyst and United States men’s national team legend Alexi Lalas appears animated on stage at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California on April 14, 2023. (Michael Janosz/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
The American-English football rivalry was at its height in 2022, when they faced each other in their group stage in Qatar. It was a 0-0 draw in a hard-fought match for both teams, but in 2026 they will have to advance from their respective groups if they want to meet in the tournament.
But Lalas couldn’t imagine England winning their first World Cup since 1966 – the country’s only tournament victory of all tournaments.
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There’s no denying, though, how great the England team will be this year, as Lalas knows.
“They’re really good,” he said. “As much as it pains me to say it, they are very, very good. The football gods have a wicked sense of humour. Please, not England, anyone but England.”
Lalas’ colleague on Fox Sports, presenter Rebecca Lowe, is a west Londoner who has dreamed of her country winning it all ever since she can remember.
“Every four years of my playing since 1990, I think about England winning the World Cup,” she said after Lalas’s speech. “So I’m now getting to a stage where if I NOW go against them, they will do it.
“I’m going to be brave. He’s going to come home.”
Commentator and former player Alexi Lalas watches before the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup final between the United States and Mexico at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas on July 6, 2025. (Omar Vega/Getty Images)
Lowe and Lalas said they will have made a bet once the tournament begins that if England do indeed win it all, England will have to do something and vice versa.
Carli Lloyd, Stu Holden and Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez also gave their predictions on who would win. Hernandez sided with Lowe, believing England could win it all, although he hopes his home country Mexico, another host venue, can do it for him.
Both Lloyd and Holden believe France, who fell on penalties to Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final, will get the job done at MetLife Stadium in July.
“The French, I just look at this team, they keep getting stronger. When they go down one generation, the next generation comes,” Holden said.
Soccer analyst Alexi Lalas speaks during FOX Sports’ 2018 FIFA World Cup Celebration on September 26, 2017, at ArtBeam in New York. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images for FOX Sports)
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“I’m going to go with France as well,” Lloyd added shortly after. “The depth, the experience. I know personally losing in 2011 at the World Cup, coming back and really wanting to really win in 2015. There’s something there.”
The panel hoped the U.S. men’s national team could succeed at home, but it’s hard to deny the level of talent elsewhere as the world’s best players and countries converge on North America in just a few weeks.
