The road to the 2026 World Cup is a long one, and no fewer than 50 nations play qualifiers on Thursday, Sept. 4 as teams across the globe vie for one of the 48 bids to next year’s tournament.

For soccer fans, there’s a possible run of 15 straight hours of play available to watch. The slate of World Cup qualifiers will kick off in Africa, with Chad hosting Ghana at 9 a.m. ET, and the latest qualifying match of the day (Guatemala vs. El Salvador) won’t kick off until 10 p.m. ET.

The most pressure-packed game might come in South America, where Colombia and Bolivia face off in Barranquilla. Neither team has clinched a berth, and with two rounds left to play, a draw would eliminate the visitors. Meanwhile, Colombia has far loftier expectations than scraping by, and one more stumble would put them into a potential must-win next week at Venezuela.

Elsewhere, some of Europe’s biggest powers will be in action. Germany will face a potentially tricky trip to Slovakia, while Spain will head to Sofia to take on Bulgaria. The Netherlands, who have 10 goals for and none conceded after two matches, will host Poland in what could be one of their more difficult matches in Group G.

Here is a full list of every 2026 World Cup qualifier for Thursday, including start times and options to catch select games:

World Cup qualifiers today: Times, schedule, how to watch

All times Eastern.

Confederation of African Football

Group A: Guinea-Bissau vs. Sierra Leone – 12 p.m.
Group D: Angola vs. Libya – 12 p.m.
Group D: Mauritius vs. Cape Verde – 12 p.m.
Group D: Cameroon vs. Eswatini – 3 p.m.
Group G: Algeria vs. Botswana – 3 p.m.
Group H: São Tomé and Príncipe vs. Equatorial Guinea – 12 p.m.
Group H: Tunisia vs. Liberia – 3 p.m.
Group I: Chad vs. Ghana – 9 a.m.
Group I: Madagascar vs. Central African Republic – 12 p.m.
Group I: Mali vs. Comoros – 3 p.m.

Watch Thursday’s CAF World Cup qualifiers on ESPN+

Concacaf (North and Central America, and the Caribbean)

Group A: Suriname vs. Panama – 5:30 p.m.
Group A: Guatemala vs. El Salvador – 10 p.m.

Watch Concacaf World Cup qualifying on Fubo (free trial)

CONMEBOL (South America)

Matchday 17: Uruguay vs. Peru – 7:30 p.m.
Matchday 17: Colombia vs. Bolivia – 7:30 p.m.
Matchday 17: Paraguay vs. Ecuador – 7:30 p.m.
Matchday 17: Argentina vs. Venezuela – 7:30 p.m.
Matchday 17: Brazil vs. Chile – 8:30 p.m.

UEFA (Europe)

Group A: Luxembourg vs. Northern Ireland – 2:45 p.m.
Group A: Slovakia vs. Germany – 2:45 p.m.
Group E: Georgia vs. Turkey – 12 p.m.
Group E: Bulgaria vs. Spain – 2:45 p.m.
Group G: Lithuania vs. Malta – 12 p.m.
Group G: Netherlands vs. Poland – 2:45 p.m.
Group J: Kazakhstan vs. Wales – 10 a.m.
Group J: Liechtenstein vs. Belgium – 2:45 p.m.

Watch Thursday’s UEFA World Cup qualifying games on Fubo (free trial)

The Alabama football program has struggled under coach Kalen DeBoer, a stark contrast to its previous success.
Former coach Nick Saban’s departure has left a significant void, with the team’s performance declining sharply.
Alabama has lost four games as double-digit favorites in DeBoer’s first 14 games.

As we all vicariously live through the ugly undoing of the greatest dynasty in college football history, one question looms above all else. 

Who feels worse: Alabama fans, or Ms. Terry? 

One is watching whatever this is at Alabama play out in front of their collective eyes, the other has to hear about it from Nick Saban.

Before we go further, let me stress that Saban’s world revolves around his beautiful bride of more than 50 years, whom he loving calls “Ms. Terry.”

But my god, this can’t be easy for her. 

“The good news,” Saban awkwardly said Monday night on ESPN’s ‘GameDay’ broadcast, “Is every team has the best opportunity to improve from Week 1 to Week 2.”

Well, thanks for that update, TV Nick. Now tell us how you really feel. 

Because the mother trucker of a program you meticulously built and sustained at Alabama for 17 seasons, now looks like a bag of cats headed to the river. 

Because Alabama in its second season under Kalen DeBoer looks like Alabama in its last season under Mike Shula.

Because Alabama – holy mother of pigskin, big, bad Alabama – is absorbing punishment on the field instead of delivering it. And players are loafing.

I can’t believe I just wrote that: Alabama players are loafing.

A decade ago, Saban bought a Mercedes dealership in Birmingham, Alabama, and his Dream Motor Group has grown so much and been so sucessful, he recently acquired two Mercedes dealerships in Miami for $700 million.

DeBoer, meanwhile, may as well now own a used car lot. Behind that shiny Crimson paint is an engine in disrepair.

This is killing Saban, everyone. You don’t win like he did, don’t raise the bar of expectations and demand perfection every single play, and watch your beloved program lose four times as double-digit favorites in DeBoer’s first 14 games.

The first of those unthinkable losses was last season to SEC tomato can Vanderbilt, the last on Saturday to a Florida State team that won two flippin’ games in 2024. Two.

Since a win last season over Georgia – the high-water mark of the DeBoer era – Alabama is a lousy 5-5 in its last 10 games. Read that again. 

Now imagine Nick and Terry – his confidant of five-plus decades, and the one person who knows him better than any other – when they’re alone and reflecting while trying to enjoy that 6,200-feet, $17.5 million retirement mansion in Jupiter Island, Florida.

Saban left Alabama after the 2023 season because he said it was time. The game was drastically changing off the field, and frankly, he didn’t want to hang around for it.

But this wasn’t part of the deal. Watching a completely rebuilt Florida State offensive line, which couldn’t bust a grape in 2024, smash the Alabama front seven over and over and over again.

Watching the now listless Alabama program, this group of furloughed players from the unrelenting taskmaster of years past, is too much for one rare, megalomaniacal legend of a coach to bear.

And that means the lovely Ms. Terry has to bear it, too. By proxy.

The women who willingly choose to marry into the untenable profession with their husbands, who live and breathe it on a daily basis, are the last line of sanity. When everything else is up to a million, they modulate the turmoil down to one.

Because right now Nick is looking at Terry and asking if they did the right thing. He feels guilty, he could’ve done more. He let down the players and the university.

All coaches think this way. No matter the success, no matter the failure. 

But there’s no way Saban could’ve seen this coming so quickly. Not the way he set up the program to continuing winning at a high level. 

No one recruited like Saban, stacking and packing the roster with four- and five-star recruits like game day traffic on McFarland Boulevard. If any program in the country was built to sustain losses in the transfer portal, much less a coaching change, it was Alabama. 

But Saban overlooked one key factor in his departure: his shadow and specter are no longer around. 

Saban ruled the program with an iron fist, a philosophy so detailed and distinct in its success, players fed off it. They not only wanted to play for Saban, they needed to. 

If that meant busting ass every day in practice as a backup to push the first team ahead of you, so be it. Because eventually, your time would arrive — and when it did, heaven help the guy across from you.

Alabama with DeBoer is like high school with a substitute teacher. Players know how to work and prepare, but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying to see what they can get away with.

It began with the shocking loss at Vanderbilt, and then the loss at the worst Oklahoma team in three decades — with a spot in the College Football Playoff on the line. 

It continued in a New Year’s Day bowl against Michigan, which couldn’t complete a pass to save its life. Yet still bludgeoned Alabama at the point of attack, and won a rock fight. 

Then came Florida State, whose transfer quarterback Thomas Castellanos taunted Alabama all offseason by saying Saban wasn’t around to save the Tide. 

And you know what? Castellanos was right.

Imagine Nick trying to explain that to Ms. Terry. A quarterback playing for his third team in four years brought Alabama to its knees. 

Or maybe it was the used car salesman. 

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

Red Sox rookie Roman Anthony is expected to miss the rest of the regular season with a strained oblique.
Anthony has been a key offensive player for Boston, batting .329 since moving to the top of the lineup on June 28.
The injury comes as the Red Sox hold a top American League wild card spot.

The most impactful rookie in the American League pennant race will likely miss the rest of the regular season.

Roman Anthony, the No. 1 overall prospect summoned to Boston in June and now an invaluable cog in their lineup, strained his oblique and will likely miss four to six weeks, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said on the club’s flagship radio station.

Anthony, 21, has been parked in one of the top three spots in the Red Sox lineup since June 28, a span in which he’s batted .329 with a .930 OPS and led the AL with 24 multi-hit games. He’s batted leadoff in 22 of 25 games since Aug. 6, and the Red Sox have won 10 of 13 games to seize command of an AL wild card spot, tied with the New York Yankees for the top position.

They’d also closed within 2 1/2 games of first-place Toronto in the AL East, but that deficit will be much harder to overcome without Anthony.

He debuted June 9 and has been a key reason the club picked up the pace in the weeks following the blockbuster June 15 trade of Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants.

‘He’s one of our best offensive players,’ Cora said in his appearance on WEEI. ‘It sounds harsh but we have to move on. We’ve been through this before.’

The Red Sox are fortunate to have several versatile players, most notably Ceddane Rafaela, who will likely be the full-time center fielder in Anthony’s absence, flanked by Jarren Duran and some combination of Rob Refsnyder and Masataka Yoshida.

Infielder Nick Sogard will be recalled to take Anthony’s roster spot, and he, David Hamilton and Romy Gonzalez will cover second base.

Anthony is batting .292 with eight homers and an .859 OPS, amassing 3.1 WAR. The timeline of his estimated absence would sideline him for the rest of the regular season, while allowing a possible return during a potential AL wild card series.

NEW YORK – For the past two decades, the script, the movie, and the ending have been the same when questioning why American male tennis players haven’t won a major Grand Slam title since 2003.

The American women, however, do not face such a problem or criticism, with Madison Keys and Coco Gauff winning Grand Slams in the past calendar year, while consistently making deep runs in every tournament.

‘It hasn’t been much of a competition, no offense to them, but now it is,’ Gauff said about her male counterparts at the Cincinnati Open. ‘We’ve had three straight slams with American in the finals, so I think we’re doing pretty good on our end. They have to catch up.’

Gauff’s words, whether said half-jokingly or not, are a constant point of contention around the tennis world, and weeks before every Grand Slam championship, chatter and columns like this one saturate the atmosphere, putting a possible damper on the tournament before it even gets started.

There are certainly other, more defined title droughts in North American sports, whether it is a team or an individual, but none with a definitive answer as to why this is the case.

It’s certainly not talent that is the cause of recent championship success in tennis, as there are three players (Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, and Tommy Paul) born in the United States who are currently in the Top 20 of the ATP Rankings, and a fourth American, Frances Tiafoe, who is a two-time US Open semifinalist.

It’s gotten to the point where the question isn’t when one of these men will win a Grand Slam championship, but rather who is the last American still playing in a major tournament, and when did they get eliminated.

The latest answer is Fritz as the last American standing, who continued his losing streak against Novak Djokovic in a four-set defeat in the US Open quarterfinals on Tuesday night. Fritz has lost each of his 11 lifetime matches against Djokovic, a 38-year-old with a sometimes aching body, but also an all-time great 24-time Grand Slam champion who will appear in his 53rd Grand Slam semifinal on Friday.

Fritz, even if he didn’t know that he wore his headband upside down for nearly half the match against Djokovic, knew the uphill battle that awaited him in the same draw as some of the sport’s top players.

‘I was really excited at the fact that kind of like that’s what I was looking at in the draw, oh, I will have the opportunity to do the coolest thing ever, play Novak, potentially try to go through Novak, Carlos, and Sinner. I thought that was kind of cool. I like the challenge,’ Fritz said after the match.

‘I’m sure he, being the challenger he is, is very excited for that challenge.’

Before Fritz’s run to the US Open final last year, it had been 15 years since an American man had reached a major singles final.

The name Andy Roddick looms large these days when discussing the reasons for the non-title drought, as he is the last American to win a Grand Slam title and the last to be ranked No. 1 in singles.

Roddick’s ace on championship point against Juan Carlos Ferrero in that 2003 US Open set off a wave of excitement for the future of tennis in this country. Roddick, an International Tennis Hall of Famer, went on to appear in three Wimbledon finals before announcing his retirement at age 30 in 2012.

So, the question is, who has the best chance of breaking through with that elusive championship? Presumably, the aforementioned players above certainly have plenty of chances over the next few years, as all of them are under the age of 30.

There may be two problems with those facts:

Their contemporaries and biggest competition are also young, namely Italy’s Jannik Sinner and Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz, who are 24 and 22 years old, respectively.

And those two, who are ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world, have won each of the last seven Grand Slam championships, demonstrating levels of dominance comparable to those of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Djokovic over the years, when very few men have hoisted championship trophies while they were in their prime.

Shelton, at age 22, with his dynamic left-handed serve and supreme athleticism to match, has reached two Grand Slam semifinals and won his first Masters 1000-level title at the Canadian Open last month, but had to withdraw from this year’s US Open because of a shoulder injury.

‘I’d love to see it,’ Shelton said. ‘[Frances Tiafoe] is always on a different level when he plays here. Fritz was in the finals. Tommy always plays really well here, too.. We’ve got a lot of guys who can make deep runs here and play against the best players in the world. I think that it’s a matter of time for us.’

Paul has been ranked as high as eighth in the world, and Tiafoe has slid down the rankings over the summer thanks to a second-round exit at Wimbledon and being dispatched in the third round at Flushing Meadows, admitting after that defeat that he didn’t know how he was going to recover from that latest disappointment.

‘I can’t wait for it to happen,’ Shelton said before the US Open about the drought, ‘and we kind of move on to a different question.’

Agreed, Mr. Shelton, and those who are invested in the sport no doubt can’t wait to stop asking it.