The last time Colombia went to a World Cup, in Russia in 2018, they were eliminated in the round of sixteen by England — a match decided on penalties, in which Mateus Uribe hit the crossbar and Carlos Bacca’s penalty was saved by Jordan Pickford. James Rodríguez, who had won the Golden Boot in 2014 and generated more widespread excitement about Colombian football than any tournament moment before him, played. He has been playing for Colombia ever since, through the years of not qualifying, through the coaching changes, through a club career that has taken him from Real Madrid to Everton to Al Rayyan to Minnesota United in MLS, where he is currently thirty-four years old and still, in the right moments, still capable of producing the kind of footballing moment that makes the specific argument for why some players cannot be reduced to their statistics.
Néstor Lorenzo named the squad. James Rodriguez is in it. Luis Díaz, who left Liverpool for Bayern Munich in the summer of 2025, is in it. David Ospina, thirty-seven years old and playing for Atlético Nacional in the Colombian domestic league, is in it. The generation that qualified Colombia from CONMEBOL — a qualifying campaign that produced one of South America’s more emotional runs of results — has arrived at the tournament with real attacking quality and significant narrative weight.
The Group
Colombia are in Group K with Portugal, Uzbekistan and DR Congo. The headline fixture is Colombia versus Portugal — which is, in practice, James Rodriguez versus Cristiano Ronaldo, two players in their forties (or approaching them), both attending what is, almost certainly, their final World Cup. Both of them with the specific gift of making football feel like it matters beyond tactics and statistics. Both of them carrying the weight of entire nations’ football identities.
The match will be watched beyond its tactical content. It will be watched for the moments of individual quality that these two players can still produce, and for the question of which of their national teams is better organised around the talent surrounding those individuals.
Uzbekistan and DR Congo represent the qualification achievement more than the expectation of advancement. Colombia and Portugal will contest the group’s meaningful places.
Luis Díaz
The best news for Colombia in this tournament, beyond the qualification itself, is that Luis Díaz is playing for Bayern Munich and playing for Bayern Munich very well. The £60 million departure from Liverpool — where he was consistently one of the most dangerous wingers in the Premier League — initially raised questions about whether the Bundesliga’s different physical demands and tactical requirements would suit him. The answer, across his first season in Munich under Vincent Kompany, has been positive: six goals and four assists in his first ten appearances in the league before injury interrupted his campaign, the quality of his play confirming that his technical gifts translate across environments.
At twenty-eight, Díaz is in the prime of his career. His pace and his directness — the ability to carry the ball at speed towards defenders and either beat them on the outside or cut inside onto his right — are the tools that Colombia will use most frequently in transition. His work rate and his pressing contribution when Colombia are out of possession reflect the habits of a player who has been in high-intensity pressing systems at Liverpool and now at Bayern.
He is the player Colombia’s opponents will most need to contain, and the player most likely to decide a knockout match if Colombia get that far.
James at Thirty-Four
James Rodríguez is thirty-four years old and playing in MLS. His career, if you trace it from the 2014 Golden Boot to now, is the story of a talent so specific and so beautiful — the left foot, the movement between the lines, the ability to receive and turn in one motion — that it has survived environments that would have ended careers built on a narrower foundation.
Minnesota United gave him the platform to play regularly, which is what James has always needed above anything else. He has goals and assists. He is not the player he was at twenty-three at the Estadio Maracanã when he scored the volley against Uruguay that stands as one of the great World Cup goals. He is, however, still the player whose involvement in a match creates goalscoring situations through the quality of his first touch and the accuracy of his passing.
Lorenzo’s challenge is to use James in a way that maximises what he can still produce while acknowledging the physical limitations that MLS and age have introduced. Playing him as a second midfielder, slightly withdrawn, with the licence to find position rather than the obligation to press in the first line — this is the template that has worked in the qualifying campaign and will be the template in North America.
The Defensive Picture
Dávinson Sánchez, at Galatasaray, and Jhon Lucumí, at Bologna, provide the established centre-back partnership. The question in Colombian defence has always been the degree to which individual quality in the attacking positions can compensate for a defensive structure that, against the top sides in CONMEBOL qualifying, was tested repeatedly. Against Portugal or a potential knockout-round opponent at this level, the defensive organisation will need to be significantly more coherent.
David Ospina’s selection at thirty-seven is the most directly comparable choice to Ochoa at Mexico — the veteran goalkeeper whose tournament experience and specific quality in high-pressure moments justifies the selection on different grounds from what a straightforward form assessment would produce. Ospina has been excellent at Atlético Nacional. Whether that domestic-league form translates to the level of intensity that tournament football demands is the selection’s core risk.
The Verdict
Colombia should advance from Group K. Portugal, as the group’s other likely qualifier, will test whether Lorenzo’s defensive organisation can contain Bernardo Silva and Rafael Leão across ninety minutes.
The round of sixteen is where Colombia’s ceiling becomes measurable. A quarter-final would represent the best result in Colombian football since 2014. Whether the combination of Díaz’s pace, James’s creativity and the defensive stability that CONMEBOL qualifying built is sufficient for that depends on maintaining fitness — Díaz’s fitness is the most important — and on Lorenzo finding the tactical approach that uses the squad’s strengths without exposing its defensive limitations against opponents who press high.
The James versus Ronaldo match will be televised everywhere. It will generate the kind of attention that narrative football generates when it is in the right setting — two careers, one last significant stage, the quality of the football secondary to the weight of what the match represents for both nations and both players.
What happens after the narrative settles is what Colombia’s football will be judged on.