Your Pocket Guide to the FIFA World Cup

The world's biggest sporting event is back on our screens, and Australia is just hours away from taking the pitch.

If you're a novice who wants to keep up with the hype, we've got you covered.

Here is a pocket guide to get you across the basics.

You can jump straight to our breakdown of the key rules here.

Tell me about the games

The Socceroos are guaranteed to play at least three matches.

That's because the first round of the FIFA World Cup (known as the group stage) is played as a round-robin tournament.

For this round, Australia has been sorted into a group with Paraguay, the United States and Türkiye, so we'll have one game against each team.

Here's a closer look at those fixtures.

Every game beyond the group stage is a knock-out match, meaning if a team loses, they're eliminated from World Cup contention.

This year, the tournament has been expanded from 32 to 48 teams, which means we'll get an extra knock-out round.

How can I follow along?

ABC Sport will be live-blogging every World Cup game, and we will have extensive coverage of all the tournament's biggest storylines here.

ABC Sport will provide radio commentary of all Socceroos games, key group stage games, and all of the knockout stage.

You can also watch all Socceroos matches live on SBS and SBS On Demand.

Let's dive into the squad

There's a lot of expectation on the Socceroos to perform well this year.

The squad has been through a generational rebuild that brought in a suite of young players. It's also the first World Cup with Tony Popovic as head coach.

At the last World Cup (in Qatar in 2022), Australia matched its best-ever result by reaching the Round of 16.

That set a bit of a benchmark for this tournament's squad to hopefully reach, or even surpass.

So who'll be playing in North America?

Popovic revealed the 26 players Australia would be taking to the tournament on June 1.

On paper, it looks like quite an offensive squad but their strategy in warm-up games has been more guarded, not unlike Popovic's patient playing style!

One key quote

"As an organisation, you would have to say decisions like … awarding this peace prize makes a mockery of what they're trying to do with the human rights charter."

— Jackson Irvine, Socceroos midfielder

The tournament organiser has its own a chequered human rights record, despite having its own human rights policy.

Last year, the governing body launched the FIFA Peace Prize to reward individuals who have taken "exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace".

The inaugural prize went to US President Donald Trump, leading several human rights organisations to accuse FIFA of facilitating "sportswashing" (where governments use sporting events to sanitise their reputations while committing human rights abuses).

"Trump policies on refugees, crackdowns on free speech, maritime strikes that amount to extrajudicial killings and deportations of asylum seekers are at odds with any credible 'peace prize'," Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden wrote in December.

Outspoken Socceroos midfielder Jackson Irvine made headlines in April for his take on the president receiving the prize.

"Decisions like that feel like they just set us back in the perceived market ⁠of what football currently is, especially at the top level where it's becoming so disconnected from society and the grassroots of what the game actually is and means in ​our communities and in the world," he told Reuters in April.

Teach me the rules

So, we've covered when the Socceroos are playing and who's on the squad; now it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty of the rule book!

Our team has gone through the International Football Association Board's (IFAB) Laws of the Game documents so you don't have to.

Here are the key points to help you feel informed in the post-match chats.

Pop quiz

So, you've brushed up on the rules of the game. Let's check how well you know them!