Paraguay

The Story

Paraguay is back. Sixteen years since South Africa 2010, the longest gap between World Cup appearances for a CONMEBOL country not named Bolivia, and it took the appointment of an Argentine coach — Gustavo Alfaro, the former Ecuador manager — to finally break the streak. He took over in mid-2024 with Paraguay sixth in the table and no realistic qualification path. They then beat Argentina 1-0 in Asunción, beat Brazil 1-0 in Asunción, and booked the last automatic CONMEBOL spot with a match to spare.

The team Alfaro built is the team Paraguay has always wanted to be — organized at the back around Gustavo Gómez, compact through midfield with Andrés Cubas and Damián Bobadilla, and counter-attacking through Enciso and Sanabria. It is not a team that scores a lot. It is a team that doesn't concede a lot, and that's been enough.

Group J suits them. No European heavyweight. Ivory Coast is the favorite and is probably beatable. Tunisia is a game of inches. Honduras, the CONCACAF floor, is the one they have to win. Paraguay has never won a World Cup group stage match since 1998 — the whole tournament experience since then has been draws, penalty shootouts, and 1-0 losses in the 82nd minute. This summer is the first realistic chance in a generation to reset that record.

3 Players to Know

Gustavo Gómez

The captain. Thirty-two, AC Milan's former center-back, now Palmeiras' and the backbone of a defense that's been carrying Paraguay through qualifying. Eighty-plus caps, league titles in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil — the kind of career résumé that doesn't show up on FIFA ratings but makes every South American coach immediately want him. He scored the header that beat Brazil 1-0 in Asunción in qualifying — a result that put Paraguay on the road to 2026 and gave the country one of the loudest nights it's had in a decade.

Julio Enciso

If Paraguay has a star, it's Enciso. He's 22, he grew up in Caaguazú, he was plucked from Libertad at 18 by Brighton, then sold to Strasbourg in the summer of 2025 as part of the BlueCo group move. His 30-yard curler against Manchester City in 2023 was the goal of that Premier League season. He's recovered from the knee injury that wrecked most of his 2023-24 and scored three goals in Paraguay's qualifying run. The talent is Champions League. The body has been fragile. June is the first time the whole world gets to find out which version shows up.

Antonio 'Tony' Sanabria

Torino's target forward for the better part of six seasons, born in Asunción, came up in Barcelona's La Masia before Spain quietly decided he wasn't going to make it there. He's 30, he's the striker Gustavo Alfaro has settled on up top, and he scored the only goal of the 1-0 win over Argentina in Asunción in September 2024 that made the world take Paraguay seriously again. Not a player who scores a lot. A player who scores the ones that matter.

The Food

Signature Dish

Sopa paraguaya is the national dish, and the great joke of it is that it isn't soup — it's a dense, warm cornbread baked with sharp white cheese and onion, cut into squares and served alongside the actual soup. Then chipá: a small, chewy roll of cassava flour and queso Paraguay, sold hot from street baskets at every bus stop in Asunción and Ciudad del Este. The grilled meat ritual is asado on an asador vertical, beef salted heavily, served with mandioca (boiled cassava) instead of potatoes. Terere — iced yerba mate with cold water and crushed herbs — is the drink, and it's drunk from a cup called a guampa through a metal straw, and it's passed around the group.

Where to Eat in DFW

DFW doesn't have a Paraguayan restaurant — the diaspora is too small — so the call is Corrientes 348 in the Dallas Arts District. It's Argentine, but the South American parrilla tradition is the one Paraguay shares most closely: wood-fired beef, mixed grill for the table, chimichurri, the parrillero walking out with skewers. For the chipá and sopa paraguaya side of Paraguayan cooking, your best bet is the Hispanic bakery counter at El Rancho Supermercado in Irving, where someone is almost certainly making something close to it for the neighborhood. Reservations at Corrientes go fast on match days.

Fan Culture

Paraguay is the country whose fan choreography involves a giant red-and-white flag, an accordion player (literally — polka paraguaya is a national genre and someone is always playing it), and the longest 16-year grievance in South American football. The 2010 quarterfinal loss to Spain is still processed as theft. The "Paraguay, campeón" chant is ironic and sincere at the same time. Their fans travel in lower numbers than Argentina or Brazil, but the ones who show up are loud, polished in their singing, and carry flags with the names of every small town between Asunción and Encarnación. The smell is chorizo and yerba mate — and yes, someone at your section is absolutely sharing terere from a guampa, because that's what you do.