Day: March 5, 2026

Are South American teams going to dominate at the 2026 FIFA World Cup? Maybe not all of them, but it would not be surprising to see two of CONMEBOL’s best in the tournament’s semifinals. Here are my full power rankings with less than 100 days until the first game on June 11: You know, you love them (or at least you know them; I love them): the USA. It’s not crazy to put USA here in the top-10. In the FIFA Rankings, the U.S. is at 15th, but again, this isn’t just a World Cup; it’s a home World Cup and I think that is relative to the fact that they are going to find some magic, being the host and playing in a home World Cup, more than our friends in the north, Canada, and our friends to south, Mexico. It’s still Germany. This isn’t the greatest German team, but Germany and Germans: they find a way in big moments to be big, and I think they’re going to be big here. Morocco, everybody’s darling over the past couple of cycles. Men, women, all ages — there’s something in the water over there and I think that will continue. I often times have been much more bullish about the Brazilian team than my “State of the Union” my co-host  David Mosse, although he’s coming around a little as of late. We’re keeping an eye on Cristiano Ronaldo and a possible injury; who knows if that plays into it. We’ve talked so much about the depth that Roberto Martinez has at his disposal with this Portugal team but also the dynamic that he has to deal with in Cristiano Ronaldo. I could have put England higher, but I put them at No. 5, and they should thank me because they don’t want any pressure. I do think they will wilt and fold under pressure, so I’m going to put them in at No. 5. Still, this a very good England team and you know it pains me to say that. While this is a great Argentina team and they’re the defending champions, a repeat hasn’t been done since back in the 60s and I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to do. Everybody’s darling, Colombia. They’re a great team and I do think that the South American teams will have an advantage playing in North America and specifically playing in the U.S. as we’ve seen before in the Copa América. I just feel like they’re comfortable and maybe more so than other teams. I think South America is going to have a big World Cup. Now you’re getting to your usual suspects, your elite teams. You can interchange France and Spain, but I’m going to put France at second. That means the aforementioned Spain comes in at No. 1. This is my power rankings. If you don’t like my power rankings, get your own.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

Phoenix Raceway (Avondale, Ariz.) — The venue is kind of new but it’s the same old INDYCAR question heading into the second race of the season. How are teams going to beat Alex Palou? “We need to improve and be better — but I think the whole field needs to try and do that for sure,” said Marcus Ericsson, who finished sixth in the season opener last Sunday at St. Petersburg. The INDYCAR teams made a quick turnaround and race Saturday at Phoenix Raceway, a 1-mile oval that last played host to an INDYCAR race in 2018. Why the rush? To join NASCAR in what is a mega weekend of U.S. motorsports in the desert at a track where both NASCAR and INDYCAR have rich histories. Here’s what to know going into the event, including comments from drivers from their chats today with me and other reporters, the day before practice and qualifying Friday for the 250-lap Good Ranchers 250 on Saturday (3 p.m. ET, FOX) followed by NASCAR’s Straight Talk Wireless 500 on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1) in the Desert Double. Are fans and drivers rooting against four-time INDYCAR champion Alex Palou? Palou has won the title the last three years, including in 2025 when he won eight races, and now is 1-for-1 in 2026 after his St. Pete win. “I can feel it when there’s driver intros, and there’s some people that just come at me and be like, ‘Can you stop winning?’ But I feel like we’re past that,” Palou told me and other reporters. “There’s people that used to say that, they now are cheering for us. So it’s good.” [PHOENIX WEEKEND: INDYCAR as Support Series Makes Sense] Palou isn’t concerned about people outwardly rooting him to lose “Last year was magical and this year, that was great [at St. Pete],” Palou said. “But it’s not that we have an edge on everybody. We have an amazing team, and we execute very well. “But it’s not like we go out and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, look, it’s easy.’” He’s not considering himself a favorite this weekend at Phoenix. “It’s going to be a struggle for the 10 car [of me],” Palou said. “We didn’t have an amazing test. We had an OK test. So we know we have to work quite a lot.” Is this a NASCAR event or an INDYCAR event? This has been the regular NASCAR spring weekend at Phoenix as part of a West Coast swing for several years. To add a little boost to this weekend, INDYCAR was added for a doubleheader Saturday with NASCAR’s O’Reilly Series and then the Cup race Sunday. INDYCAR does have a rich history at Phoenix as this is the 65th INDYCAR race at the track. It has brought up the topic on whether INDYCAR is the “support” series. INDYCAR veteran Graham Rahal noted that the INDYCAR driver motorhomes are not parked in the same area as the NASCAR driver motorhomes even though there is space in that lot. “We shouldn’t be viewed as a support series,” Rahal said. “These are two of the highest level professional series that there are in the country. Let’s just treat each other with that respect. ,.. Let’s just try to figure out a way to make it a little bit more cohesive for everybody.” [MORE MOTORSPORTS: INDYCAR, NASCAR Drivers Pick All-Time Favorites] How is Mick Schumacher doing? The rookie and former Formula 1 driver seems OK after an opening race where he didn’t even finish the first lap before getting collected in an accident. Schumacher spent the rest of the race on the pit stand trying to understand what the engineers are looking for during a race. “It was important for me to go back to pit stand and see what the engineers were talking about, what we would have done maybe differently in certain scenarios, just to kind of pretend like we did the race, to be able to analyze, take away key elements of it,” Schumacher said. Will the INDYCAR drivers cut the apron like the NASCAR drivers do? No. They cannot. The rule for all INDYCAR ovals except Indianapolis reads: “At Oval Events, Drivers must not place any of the four wheels of the Car below the solid boundary line at any time.” Prior to their test here last month, the drivers were asked by INDYCAR officials if they thought the rule should be amended. “I think there was one or two guys raising their hands, but there didn’t seem to be like a lot of interest,” said INDYCAR’s Meyer Shank driver Felix Rosenqvist. “I feel like somehow you just want to be inside the lines. But NASCAR makes it work. I don’t think it really changed anything.” [INDYCAR POWER RANKINGS: Scott McLaughlin Big Mover After St. Pete] Who has raced here before? There are five INDYCAR drivers who have raced at Phoenix previously. Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden both have wins, while Will Power has a second, Alexander Rossi has a third and Graham Rahal has a fifth. The cars are a few hundred pounds heavier now with the aeroscreen and the hybrid. “I liked it a lot more,” Rahal said about the test and how the cars handled compared to 2018. “The last couple times we were here. there were some massive crashes [with the high] cornering speeds. … I feel like the drivers in a little more control. “Then it was like, just how crazy are you? And are you going to stay flat and you’re going to hang on?” So who’s the favorite for the INDYCAR race? The consensus is that Team Penske, which typically is strong on the short ovals, will be strong this weekend. David Malukas, who replaced Will Power at Team Penske, was fastest on the first day of testing at Phoenix last month. Rossi was fastest on the second day. “We know the Penske files will be good around here,” said McLaren driver Christian Lundgaard. “They were competitive at the test, very competitive, just as we always see them on one short ovals.” Can Tyler Reddick go 4-for-4? After three races, it’s hard to bet against Tyler Reddick, no? Then again, he set a new standard for wins to open the NASCAR Cup Series season with three in a row, so the odds of him getting to four in a row are slim. Reddick hasn’t won in any series at Phoenix. He has led only twice in 12 Cup starts and has just two finishes better than 20th in his last five starts at the track. [NASCAR POWER RANKINGS: SVG, Ryan Blaney Making Moves] Cup teams are getting into the meat of their season as far as different type of tracks as they have the 1-mile Phoenix and then the 1.5-mile Vegas over the next couple of weeks. “I’m really excited to see what we have for speed and pace over the next two weekends because we’ve worked really hard to improve things here,” Reddick said in his news conference after winning at Circuit of the Americas. “We’ve worked hard to kind of rethink how we get around Phoenix, and we’ve just kind of doubled down on the things that we’ve been improving at Vegas.” So who’s the favorite in the NASCAR race? Go back to the answer on the INDYCAR side and you’ll find the answer here. Team Penske, once again, is the favorite. Ryan Blaney won the last race here in November. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell won it a year ago. But the Penske drivers seem to shine here. And just like for their INDYCAR brethren, a win would be coming at the right time. Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

Nearly three years ago, Edwin Diaz got Teoscar Hernandez looking with an inside slider on the 10th pitch of the at-bat and raised his hands into the air as his Team Puerto Rico teammates emptied out of the dugout to celebrate in Miami. Díaz’s spotless work in the ninth preserved an upset win over the Dominican Republic to advance to the quarterfinals of the 2023 World Baseball Classic. The Puerto Rican players marked the occasion by hopping up and down in front of the mound. Moments later, the star closer was on the ground grabbing at his knee. In a freak accident amid the revelry, Díaz tore his patellar tendon, forcing him out for the entire 2023 season. Three years later, the fluke injury has not deterred him from returning to the competition, especially with his country set to host Pool A in San Juan starting March 6. “That was an easy decision,” Díaz said. “It’ll be my first time playing in front of my people in Puerto Rico, so that was an easy ‘yes’ when I knew the WBC was going to be there.” Nevertheless, the devastating injury to Díaz is among the reasons why it has been more difficult for other prominent MLB players to receive clearance to play in the tournament this year — fellow Puerto Rico standouts Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa, for example, are among the notable standouts who weren’t able to get insured — and why many MLB managers still hold their breath when their players perform in the highly-competitive competition just weeks ahead of Opening Day. “We want our players to play well and want them to show off,” said Padres manager Craig Stammen. “The other part, it’s all in the back of our heads, we want them to stay healthy and be ready for us, not have a catastrophic injury that sometimes happens in the WBC.” The Díaz injury was the most significant one in 2023, though Jose Altuve also missed the first 43 games of the regular season that year after fracturing his thumb when he was hit by a pitch in the WBC. Altuve only played in 90 games that year, marking the only full season since 2012 in which he has played fewer than 120 games. In 2017, Miguel Cabrera injured his back during the WBC and went on to have the worst offensive season of his career to that point while playing through pain for most of it. Sometimes, especially with pitchers, it’s not clear at the moment how the wear-and-tear of throwing high-leverage innings early in the calendar might lead to issues later in the year. In 2017, Drew Smyly struck out eight batters in 4.2 innings against Venezuela in a WBC game on March 17. Two weeks later, he was diagnosed with a flexor strain. He eventually needed Tommy John surgery and did not throw a pitch that season for the Mariners. In 2023, Shohei Ohtani and Sandy Alcántara both started the year pitching in the WBC and ended it undergoing Tommy John surgery. It’s impossible to know with any certainty if the early start led to the end result, but it’s another example of why teams worry more about pitchers than position players in the event. “That’s not a WBC thing,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell clarified, “that’s an everyday thing.” Counsell noted that the WBC is a thrilling event for players who get to play deep into the tournament, and all he is worried about is that his players who are participating — there are many from the Cubs, with Alex Bregman (USA), Pete Crow-Armstrong (USA), Matthew Boyd (USA), Seiya Suzuki (Japan), Javier Assad (Mexico), Daniel Palencia (Venezuela), Miguel Amaya (Panama) and Jameson Taillon (Canada) all going — take ownership of their preparation. “Because you don’t necessarily have the whole organization structuring everything quite the way they would if you were in your team’s camp,” Counsell explained. “That’s really the onus that kind of falls on the players.” In addition to Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Wandy Peralta playing for the Dominican Republic, Xander Bogaerts playing for the Netherlands and Ron Marinaccio playing for Italy, the Padres will also be sending Mason Miller, the star of their esteemed bullpen, to close out games for Team USA. Weeks before players left for the WBC, Stammen said Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla was in discussion with Team USA pitching coach Andy Pettitte about Miller’s usage. Miller and the Padres’ brass were also in constant communication with each other before he left to join Team USA, making sure his build-up for the season is where he wants and needs it to be. “We’d be lying to you if we weren’t cautious about it and trying to figure out the best way to get Mason ready for that scenario,” Stammen told me. “Mason’s said a lot of good things to us about how he thinks that’ll look, but in the end it’s going to be up to him in those situations to tell Mark DeRosa and Andy Pettite, like, ‘Hey, this is how I’d like to be used, this will get me ready for my season while also helping Team USA hopefully compete for the WBC championship.” Díaz, now in his first year with the Dodgers, will be trying to create more positive moments at this tournament with Puerto Rico. The defending World Series champions will also be sending Will Smith to join Team USA, Hyeseong Kim to join Team Korea and Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to join Team Japan. Ohtani will only be hitting, which minimizes much of the risk, but Yamamoto will be Japan’s ace fresh off winning World Series MVP honors after throwing 526 pitches in the postseason and pitching on back-to-back days in Games 6 and 7. “I just know the level of intensity that they will have, and so it’s more just making sure the work up to this point, that we’re putting them in the best positions to go take on that intense atmosphere,” said Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. “It is impossible to tell those guys to dial it back in any way, and nor would I do that.” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts claims he’s “not too concerned” about Yamamoto because he believes the pitcher will be prepared and understands his limitations, despite the high-pressure, high-intensity, highly-competitive environment that will await. “Once we all came to the decision that he’s gonna play and participate, I’m just rooting for him to pitch well and stay healthy,” Roberts said. “So I don’t think I’m looking at it any other way.” Beyond the conversations that MLB teams and WBC managers are having about individual players, the tournament itself provides some protection. Per WBC rules, pitchers can’t throw more than 65 pitches in a game in the first round, 80 pitches in the second round or 95 pitches in the championship round (unless he needs more to complete an at-bat). In addition, pitchers who throw 30 pitches in a game will need at least one day of rest, and pitchers who throw at least 50 pitches in a game will need at least four days of rest before pitching again. Relievers also won’t be able to throw three days in a row. “Anybody will tell you anytime you take the mound, whether it’s a spring training game or WBC game, there are risks associated with that,” Giants and Great Britain pitcher Tristan Beck told me. “But I think they do as good a job as they can with pitch limits, days off. They take it pretty seriously, and that makes it comfortable on our end.” It’s a risk that everyone who is participating is willing to take in order to represent their country in an international competition that continues drawing more eyes and acclaim. Before he left Dodgers camp to join Puerto Rico again, Díaz was asked if the WBC or World Series meant more. “I haven’t had the chance to play in the World Series, but I heard people say it’s about the same,” Díaz said. “So when I have a chance to play in the World Series, I’ll tell you guys how it feels.” Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports