At the end of the first round of group stage matches, we had the chance to ask Liverpool Offside readers to vote on the best and worst of week one of the 2026 World Cup. Now we’ve got the results, and we’ve got to be honest, a few of them surprised us a little bit.
It wasn’t just TLO readers voting, either, with a number of the network’s footy sites getting to take part in the latest edition of SB Nation Reacts, in partnership with FanDuel, and giving us the chance now to dig into both your reactions
as well as to compare them to the overall vote. So, let’s dig in!
First up, you voted on your favourite match from the first round of games, and while TLO readers picked the same one-two combo as the overall vote, to our mild surprise it was a clear win for USA’s demolition of Paraguay while England vs. Croatia came a fairly distant second—while in the overall vote it was much closer.
Third place had us picking Brazil vs. Morocco, while overall voters had Argentina vs. Algeria third and TLO’s third-favourite match came in joint-last with Iran vs. New Zealand.
For worst performance from the opening round of matches, no surprises the honours go to Spain—though Barca Blaugranes really enjoyed Ronaldo dragging Portugal down and had them running away in top spot in their vote, in the process contributing to a much closer competition network-wide.
For best individual performance, Lionel Messi’s hat-trick heroics earned the top spot while the goalkeeping heroics Cabo Verde’s Vozinha had him land in second both on TLO and in the wider vote, while a fondness for Harry Kane over on Cartilage Free Captain got him a slightly closer in third in the overall vote than he managed with our readers.
Hopefully everyone had fun with this one, and with a little luck maybe we’ll have a few more chances to take part in more SB Nation Reacts polls before the World Cup comes to a close!
