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Group Stage in the Books: Who Impressed, Who Went Home Early
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The first post in this series was about everything around the football: the new format, the rule changes, the hydration breaks, the ticketing mess. This one is about the football itself, which has been the best possible advertisement for all the noise around it.
The group stage is done, the Round of 32 has thinned the field, and the tournament has settled into the pattern the 48-team format was quietly built to produce. The old order is being pushed. A couple of giants are already gone. And an entire generation of new names has arrived, sharing the stage with the two players who have defined the last twenty years of it.
Table of contents
- The teams that turned up
- The Golden Boot race
- The new names
- Fairy tales
- The fallen giants
- The hosts
- Into the last 16
The teams that turned up
Only three teams went through the group stage with a perfect record: Mexico, France, and Argentina, three wins from three.
France have looked the most complete side in the tournament. They won all three group games and then dismantled Sweden 3-0 in the Round of 32, with an attacking trident that has been close to unplayable. Mexico, playing at home, did it the other way, grinding out three clean sheets and topping their group without conceding, before seeing off Ecuador 2-0. Argentina were the most eye-catching of the three, largely because of one man, which we will get to.
Just behind them, Brazil have been carried by Vinicius Junior back at something like his best, and got past a genuinely impressive Japan side 2-1 in the last 32. Japan were one of the stories of the group stage in defeat as much as anything - a 2-2 draw with the Netherlands and a 4-0 dismantling of Tunisia showed a team with no fear of anyone. Morocco, as they have made a habit of doing on the big stage, kept turning up.
The Golden Boot race
The scoring charts are where the tournament's headline theme is clearest: the old guard and the new, side by side.
| Player | Nation | Group-stage goals |
|---|---|---|
| Lionel Messi | Argentina | 6 |
| Kylian Mbappe | France | 4 |
| Ousmane Dembele | France | 4 |
| Vinicius Junior | Brazil | 4 |
| Erling Haaland | Norway | 4 |
Messi leads it, which at this stage of his career is faintly absurd. He scored five in his first two matches alone and is once again the reference point for the whole Argentina side. Mbappe and Dembele have shared the load for France so effectively that they are both on four, Dembele's tally including a hat-trick against Norway. Vinicius has been Brazil's engine. And Haaland needed only two matches to score four and drag Norway into the knockouts more or less single-handed.
Five players, three of them under 27, two of them named Messi and Mbappe. That is the tournament in one table.
The new names
The most encouraging thing about this group stage was how many players arrived without a reputation and left with one.
Johan Manzambi has been one of the genuine revelations, three goals and an assist as the driving force behind a Switzerland side that punched above its billing. Pau Cubarsi, Spain's teenage centre-back, has looked like he has been doing this for a decade. And for a certain kind of neutral, the best watch of all was Bosnia's 18-year-old winger Kerim Alajbegovic, fearless in a way only teenagers can be at a World Cup.
The 48-team format was sold, in part, on the promise of giving more players a stage. On that count it has delivered. Whether or not the expansion was a good idea in the abstract, it has been a launchpad for a wave of new stars.
Fairy tales
Every World Cup needs a team playing with house money, and this one had a few.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were the pick of them. They reached the finals by beating Wales and Italy on penalties in the playoffs, made their first ever World Cup knockout stage as one of the best third-placed sides, and generally played without the weight most nations carry. Norway, back at a World Cup after a long absence and armed with Haaland, were the other feel-good story with an edge, because a team with the best number nine on the planet is nobody's idea of a soft draw.
These are the stories the bigger field was designed to create. Say what you like about 104 matches, but it made room for teams and players who would never otherwise have had this stage.
The fallen giants
And then the flip side, which was brutal.
Two of the biggest names in world football went out in the Round of 32, and both went out on penalties, which is the cruelest way to exit a tournament you had not lost a game in.
| Fallen giant | Beaten by | How |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | Paraguay | 1-1, lost 4-3 on penalties |
| Netherlands | Morocco | 1-1, lost on penalties |
Germany had already looked shaky in the group stage, their defensive frailties there for everyone to see, and Paraguay punished them from the spot. The Netherlands were arguably the more painful exit, because they had been one of the better teams to watch, a proper collective with no single superstar, and they ran into a Morocco side that specialises in exactly this kind of night. Add in the underwhelming group-stage exits of the likes of Uruguay, and the message of the first knockout round was blunt: reputation buys you nothing here.
The hosts
A word on the United States, because the home nation gave the tournament one of its better nights.
The US came through the group stage - including a thumping win over Paraguay along the way - and then beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 in the Round of 32 for their first World Cup knockout win in 24 years. Folarin Balogun opened the scoring before halftime and Malik Tillman sealed it with a free kick late on. It was not without drama: Balogun was sent off in the second half, and the US saw the game out with ten men, which if anything made it a more satisfying win for the home crowd.
The reward is a Round of 16 tie against Belgium, and the small problem that their goalscorer is now suspended. A home World Cup was always going to live or die on the host team giving people a reason to care. So far, it has.
Into the last 16
That is the group stage and the first cut. What we have left is a last 16 with France, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico all looking the part, Morocco and Norway carrying momentum and a striker each that no one wants to face, and a home nation still in it and still capable of a scene. Two of the traditional favourites are already watching from home.
The tournament is doing what a World Cup is supposed to do. The next post in this series will pick it up closer to the final, once the last 16 has narrowed things down and we can see who is actually built to go all the way.