A few days ago, we gave you the first World Cup Reacts from SB Nation and their partnership with FanDuel. Well, let’s go through the results!
The questions that were presented to the Stars & Stripes FC community and ! Over the course of the tournament, SB Nation will be offering some quick survey questions to see what their communities may think on some of the major topics that we will face in this World Cup. You answer the questions from a quick survey, and a few days later we will post the results.
The first questions we have were pretty straight forward:
-Who will win the World Cup?
-Who will win the Golden Ball?
The results had some realism and some optimism amongst the group:
For the World Cup winner, Spain had a slight edge over the United States Men’s National Team. These survey results were collected before Spain opened up yesterday with a 0-0 draw against Cabo Verde, but people still think that Spain are the true favorites to win their second World Cup. Still, 30% of respondents picked the USMNT, which was definitely boosted by the big opening win over Paraguay on Friday. France (19%), Portugal (6%), and Argentina (5%) rounded out the choices.
For the Golden Ball winner, the community went overwhelmingly with one choice: The Field. The community agreed that there are too many great players in this tournament and any one of them could be the best in the tournament once it’s all done on July 19th. 46% of respondents went with The Field. Still, France’s Kylian Mbappé (21%) and Spain’s Lamine Yamal (19%) were popular choices. England’s Harry Kane (7%), Argentina’s Lionel Messi (5%), and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo (2%) rounded out the top choices.
The choices differed slightly across the entire SB Nation team sites, but the SSFC community agreed with the rest in that Spain is the favorite to win it all.
Harry Kane was the most popular Golden Ball choice, but it should be noted that the rest of the team sites don’t have as much faith in the USMNT as our community does. The USMNT did not feature on the overall voting results for team to win the World Cup, while Christian Pulisic (who hopefully will return to the lineup on Friday at 100%) was not featured among the top Golden Ball results for either SSFC or SB Nation at large.
There will be more of these surveys and other ways to react to the 2026 World Cup coming throughout the tournament, so stay tuned!
