Craig Foster: ‘I don’t like Messi as much as Maradona’

As Craig Foster sees it, you can’t divorce football from politics: ‘Football is the largest game in the world, and therefore it always reflects the world.’ Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

On a drizzly Tuesday morning at Sydney Harbour, I am doing something that would make me the envy of a great many football-fevered Australians: quizzing Craig Foster on his World Cup opinions.

Foster is, as ever, being a good sport about it. As we huddle under the Harbour Bridge for shelter, the beloved Socceroo turned commentator is telling me rapid fire who he thinks should win the 2026 trophy now that Australia’s out (Spain or France), the best match so far (that shock Belgium v Senegal twister) and his take on penalty shootouts (“I don’t agree with people who say they’re just a lottery – they are the best test of nerve in all of world sport”). Then there’s the players he roots for, and the ones he doesn’t.