World Cup: Which teams play in Boston?

The World Cup group stage games hosted at Foxborough's Gillette Stadium include three of international soccer's top-ranked teams and a few of its biggest stars.

France (ranked third in the world) won the World Cup in 2018 and was the runner-up in 2022. It's the third tournament for the high-flying Kylian Mbappé, who is fifth all-time in World Cup goals.

England (ranked fourth in the world) won in 1966. They haven't made it past the quarterfinals in any World Cup since then. But their talented squad more recently were runners-up in the last two Euros (i.e. UEFA's European Championship).

Then there's Morocco (ranked eighth) who made a deep Cinderella run during the 2022 games in Qatar to the delight of Massachusetts fans, who crowded Revere Beach to celebrate the team's success. They've remained in good form, though they suffered an upset in this year's chaotic Africa Cup of Nations final.

There's also Norway (ranked 32nd), which may not be an elite team but have perhaps the best striker in the world in Erling Haaland, a 6-foot-5 "Terminator" who scores buckets of goals for club and country.

Ghana (ranked 72nd), Haiti (ranked 83rd) and Scotland (ranked 38th) aren't expected to make deep runs in the tournament.

Those are the teams we're guaranteed to see in Foxborough.

But we'll also get a gander of either Bolivia, Iraq or Suriname. These three teams are on the qualifying bubble and will enter a play-in mini-tournament in late March to secure their place in the big bracket.

Gillette will also host two matches in the knockout rounds of the competition: a Round of 32 game that will feature the winner of Group E (which includes Germany, Ecuador, Ivory Coast and Curaçao) and a quarterfinals game. We won't know which teams are playing those win-or-go-home contests until after the group stage.

Here's the full schedule of matches set for Gillette:

You can see the full schedule on the FIFA website.