Chile

The Story

Chile missed 2018. Chile missed 2022. And now Chile has missed 2026 — three straight World Cups on the outside looking in, the longest drought since the 1970s for a country that won back-to-back Copa Américas in 2015 and 2016 and genuinely believed it had arrived among the permanent elite. The Vidal-Sánchez-Medel-Bravo generation — one of the most talented groups a South American country outside Argentina or Brazil has ever produced — ran out of legs in public, and the next generation hasn't been able to pick up the weight.

Nicolás Córdova took over in late 2024 with a mandate to end the drought. He had Brereton Díaz up front, Osorio on the wing, a midfield full of young players who were supposed to represent the reset. It wasn't enough. Chile were eliminated in CONMEBOL qualifying — not close enough for a playoff, not far enough away to avoid the sting. Three cycles. Three failures. Alexis Sánchez, 37 and still clinging to the squad, may never wear La Roja at a World Cup again.

The country that beat Argentina twice in Copa América finals now watches from Santiago while the tournament plays out on North American soil. Darío Osorio will be 26 by the next cycle. Brereton Díaz will be in his prime. The pieces for 2030 are visible, if you squint. But for a nation that has spent eight years waiting for exactly this summer, three more feels like a lifetime.

3 Players to Know

Ben Brereton Díaz

The English-born Chilean striker at Derby County — Blackburn Rovers called him up from their youth system, discovered he was half-Chilean through his mother, and suddenly La Roja had a center-forward again. He's 26, scored 22 goals in his breakout Championship season, spent a year in La Liga at Villarreal, and has now become the clearest starting No. 9 for Chile. The backstory — raised in Stoke, barely spoke Spanish when he was first called up, learned on the job in front of 90,000 at the Estadio Nacional — is the kind of story that would read like fiction in any other country's jersey.

Alexis Sánchez

At 37, still in the squad mix as Nicolás Córdova's veteran presence — currently at Udinese after an Inter Milan return that didn't work and an MLS rumor that didn't close. He's played 170-plus matches for Chile, scored 52 goals, won two Copas Américas, and is, whatever his current club form, the greatest Chilean player of his generation. Córdova dropped him from the March 2026 double-header against Brazil and Uruguay due to fitness concerns, which read in the Chilean press as the end. His comeback for June is not guaranteed. If he's in, this is his fourth and last World Cup.

Darío Osorio

The 22-year-old winger at FC Midtjylland in Denmark — born in Santiago, came up at Universidad de Chile, sold to Midtjylland at 19, and is now the player the entire new generation of La Roja gets built around. Fast, left-footed, direct in a way that Chile has not had since Eduardo Vargas was young. Scored the winner against Uruguay in September 2025 qualifying. The pipeline player — the one Córdova is betting the next decade on.

The Food

Signature Dish

The Chilean empanada — specifically the empanada de pino, a baked pastry the size of your palm filled with ground beef, onion, olives (pitted or not, be warned), a slice of hard-boiled egg, and sometimes a raisin that splits the country into two angry camps. Then pastel de choclo: a sweetcorn pudding baked over a layer of ground beef, chicken, olives, and that same raisin, served in the casserole dish it was cooked in, with a dusting of sugar on top that stops making sense about halfway through the first bite and then makes total sense by the last. The drink is a pisco sour or a terremoto — cheap white wine, pineapple ice cream, and a float of grenadine that is more dangerous than it looks.

Where to Eat in DFW

Donde La Nino (9324 Chimney Corner, Dallas) is the actual thing — a small, family-run Chilean kitchen doing empanadas de pino, pastel de choclo, choripán, and fresh sopaipillas the way your abuela would make them. The menu is exactly as long as it needs to be and the ingredients are what matter. Not a big sit-down restaurant — more of a pickup-and-takeaway counter with some seats — but it's the only DFW spot where you can get the empanada with the raisin-olive-egg Chilean cosmology intact. Worth the drive.

Fan Culture

Chilean support is La Roja and La Garra Charrúa's less famous but equally intense cousin — red shirts, white drums, and a specific Andean register of belief that every Chilean match will eventually turn into either triumph or tragedy with no middle ground. The 2014 win over Spain in Rio was the moment the modern Chile support was born. The Colo-Colo and Universidad de Chile ultras bring their club traditions to the national team — flares, banderas, the sort of choreographed Spanish-language chants ("Y ya lo ve, y ya lo ve") that will stick in your head. The smell at a Santiago watch party is choripán (chorizo on a roll with pebre, Chile's answer to chimichurri) and pisco, and the conversation afterwards either lasts 20 minutes or six hours depending on the result.