A refreshed Lions of Teranga will aim to channel the smoothness of qualification rather than the chaotic aftermath of Afcon

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

He walked out of his way to get me on to the right street, then handed me the brolly saying, ‘Here, you take this’

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It was bucketing down, absolutely pouring. I was on my way to a birthday dinner but got lost in central Sydney’s labyrinth of streets, so I ducked into an internet cafe to look up directions to the restaurant. I then wrote those directions down by hand – such were the times!

As I stepped out of the cafe, I realised just how bad the weather had become, and how ill-prepared I was for the rain. As I stood waiting to cross the road, swiftly getting wet, a man waiting for the lights in the opposite direction offered up his big rainbow umbrella to share. I gratefully accepted and, still a little unsure of where I was going, asked if he knew the way to the restaurant.

The first step is making scrolling a little harder by creating an obstacle, giving your rational brain time to catch up with your impulsive thumb

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In my clinic, a woman in her early 40s recently described something she called “brain lapse”. She is an academic and sharp as a blade, a voracious reader and someone who has held many tasks front of mind for many years. She told me that now, however, she finds herself struggling to follow a television drama. She loses the thread of conversations with her partner and states that she picks up her phone to check one thing (a single thing, she swears) and emerges 40 minutes later having watched a stranger assemble a complicated recipe from scratch and cried at a video of a dog reuniting with its family after a weather disaster. “I feel like my brain has been replaced with a knock-off,” she said. “It’s like I’m running on low-power mode all the time.”

She’s not alone. Across my practice, clients of all ages from teenagers to people in their mid- 50s are reporting the same symptoms: reduced memory, shortened attention spans, reduced ability to concentrate. Nearly all of them trace the decline to the same source – the smartphone that lives in their pocket, their palm, their bedside table, their bathroom counter, sometimes even the toilet. The almost permanent fixture in the space between them and every moment of potential boredom.

Ideas come more quickly, my thoughts roam freely, and I’m reminded I am not the main form of life on the planet

I park my car near the trail head and leash up my labrador. Mist coils around the stringy trunks of the manna gums and I breathe in a lungful of cold, peppery air. With notebook in hand, I begin to walk.

I learn a lot by walking in the forest every day. It’s like catching up on the daily news, but with a focus more ecological than political. I see which trees have fallen, what flowers have burst into bloom, which animals have been busy overnight, what weather is coming in. Most of all, surrounded by growing, breathing things that aren’t human, I learn that I am not the main form of life on the planet, but just one note in a vibrant choir of living beings. Importantly, I learn this with my brain, but also my heart, lungs, muscles and skin.

The family of Olga R almost threw out the collection of 20 songs written by concentration camp prisoners after her death, before discovering its incredible history

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Even under conditions of extreme inhumanity, humanity has the capacity to find solace in creative expression.

In the concentration camps and ghettoes of Europe under the Nazi regime, music became a sanctuary, a way to preserve Jewish identity, process trauma and maintain a historical record. A small chapter of this vast record, which resurfaced in Sydney, represents one of the earliest printed collections of Holocaust songs.

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Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

Bridge over the St. John River