Brazil opened their World Cup on Saturday against Morocco in New Jersey, bringing one of the day’s biggest fixtures to the front of the tournament on a day packed with matches. The five-time winners arrived with the weight that always follows Brazil, but also with the sense that this opening game is about proving they still belong among the sport’s giants.
For viewers searching football tonight, the schedule also included Scotland’s first World Cup match since 1998 against Haiti in Massachusetts, while Switzerland entered as one of the tournament’s most consistent teams. In the United States, the matches were shown on FOX and Telemundo, with streaming available on Fubo, giving fans a clear way to follow the action as it unfolded Saturday.
Brazil’s meeting with Morocco carried more edge than a routine group opener because the teams arrived from very different places. Morocco reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2022 and were still being spoken of as African champions, while Brazil were a five-time winner trying to reset under Carlo Ancelotti, who was brought in to change the direction of the national team. His message has been blunt enough to fit the moment: going to the World Cup just for the sake of going is stupid.
That pressure sits against a harder truth. Brazil finished fifth in Conmebol qualifying and, by their own standards, are at a low point in their history as a soccer nation. Tradition still makes them a favorite in almost any World Cup conversation, but the recent results are what now travel with them into New Jersey, and Saturday’s opener was the first real test of whether Ancelotti’s arrival changes anything quickly enough to matter.
Elsewhere, Haiti marked the end of a 52-year tournament drought just by kicking off in Massachusetts, and Qatar were still living with the memory of a group-stage exit at their own World Cup three-and-a-half years earlier. Switzerland’s case looked different again. Dan Ndoye, who had scored in five of his last six games for Switzerland, gave them a form player to lean on, while Achraf Hakimi was still being described as arguably the best full-back in the world.
Brazil’s opener against Morocco did not answer the bigger question about how far this team can go, but it did set the bar for the day. If Brazil are to look like a World Cup force again, Saturday was the kind of match they needed to take control of early, not one they could afford to spend explaining afterward.
