Netherlands, Japan, Sweden and Tunisia have all been eliminated before the Round of 16.

And group F, that was literally the group of death 💀: 3 countries went through.

1 played Brazil 🇧🇷
1 played Morocco 🇲🇦
1 played France 🇫🇷

Someone needs to tell Julian Nagelsmann: it's over.

Only three players in history have won Man of the Match in all three group-stage games at the World Cup🌟

The last round of the group stage had a bit of everything. Here's who made our XI:

Vinicius, Dembélé, Bellingham, Hakimi — the names you expected to deliver did their job.

Wissa played the perfect game when it was needed the most. DR Congo are in the Round of 32, and he's a big reason why.

And then there's Ecuador, quietly putting two players in the same team of the matchday — Vite and Ordonez.

Who would you put in your Matchday 3 XI?

We just dropped our Team of Matchday 2 at World Cup.

The XI:
🥅 Room (Curaçao)
🛡️ Mendes (Portugal) | Khalilzadeh (Iran) | Freeman (USA) | Dumfries (Netherlands)
⚙️ Fernandes (Portugal) | Manzambi (Switzerland)
⚡ Gakpo (Netherlands) | David (Canada) | Undav (Germany) | Messi (Argentina)

Here's what caught our attention when we compared both matchday selections.

Messi — the only player to appear in both matchday teams. Scored both goals against Austria (2-0), now at 18 World Cup goals all-time. At 38, making history feels routine at this point.

Iran — Rezaeian in MD1, Khalilzadeh in MD2. Two matchdays, two representatives. Quietly one of the most consistent stories of the group stage.

Small nations delivering: Cape Verde had two players in MD1 (Lopes + Vozinha). Curaçao's Room makes it into MD2. The 48-team format was supposed to give smaller nations a real shot, so far it's working.

The snubs: Mbappé (2 goals vs Iraq), Haaland (2 goals vs Senegal, 4 goals in 2 matches total), Ronaldo (2 goals vs Uzbekistan, first player to score in 6 different World Cups) — none of them made the cut. This team rewards impact over name recognition.

Netherlands and Portugal both have two representatives after strong MD2 performances — Netherlands beat Sweden 5-1, Portugal dismantled Uzbekistan 5-0.

We checked our Bracket Challenge data after Turkey got eliminated. The numbers are not kind.

81% of our users had Turkey making it out of the group stage. 33% had them in the Round of 16. Turkey will finish last in their group.

For comparison: only 0.71% of users had Haiti advancing. and Haiti also is going home early. At least our users got that one right.

You can still fill in your playoff bracket here (and be wrong about different teams): bracket-challenge.tribuna.com

Our editors picked the best XI from the opening round of the World Cup. Haaland and Messi made it, sure. But the real story is Cape Verde.

The full team:

GK Vozinha (Cape Verde)

DEF Brown (Germany) · Katić (Bosnia & Herz.) · Lopes (Cape Verde) · Rezaeian (Iran)

MID Ayari (Sweden) · Hwang In-beom (South Korea) · Bouaddi (Morocco)

FWD Just (New Zealand) · Haaland (Norway) · Messi (Argentina)

Do you agree with this team?

At this World Cup, 12 groups means 12 third-placed teams, and 8 of them advance to the Round of 32. So the majority get through, but you still have to earn it.

If you're a third-placed team, you're ranked against every other third-placed team across all groups. The criteria, in order:

1. Points
2. Goal difference
3. Goals scored
4. Team conduct score
5. Latest FIFA ranking (June 11, 2026)
6. Previous FIFA rankings

Right now Spain has 1 point and 0/0 on goals, which means they're ahead of Turkey, Jordan and Senegal purely because those three have already lost.

The to-do-list: win the next game, preferably with goals, and Spain will almost certainly be fine. Draw or lose, and it gets complicated fast because goal difference is the first tiebreaker after points, and 0/0 leaves nowhere to hide.

So yes, Spain fans, bookmark this. You might need it again before the group stage is over.

And please, don't send this to your friends who support Spain. Or do. We're not your conscience.

He started the first game at World Cup with 50K followers. But having produced seven brilliant saves to keep a clean sheet against Spain, one of the World Cup favourites, Vozinha turned into a newborn influencer.

With everyone obsessed with passing accuracy and distance covered right now, I decided to look into some alternative analytics. How many times did Shakira actually shake her hips during the performance?

• Do we count individual thrusts per hip?
• Do we count one full 360-degree rotation as a single unit?
• Or do we only track the sharp, heavy accents?

Anyway, I sat down and did some rough tracking. Just in the first 25 seconds of her opening verse, she pulls off well over 30 sharp, accented movements.

Honestly, someone needs to crunch the numbers for all her World Cup performances combined. Her total "decisive actions" on the pitch are unironically higher than what some strikers manage to deliver in a whole tournament.

Spain is leading our users' predictions so far, Portugal second. Tell us why their precitions are wrong:)

Also you can built a Bracket Challenge if you want to actually map out the whole tournament rather than just guess: bracket-challenge.tribuna.com

Hey guys,

With the World Cup expanding to 48 teams this year, the tournament tree is going to be pure chaos. To make things more exciting, we just launched a fully interactive Bracket Challenge tool tailored for the new format.

What you can do with it:

• Fully rank all the groups.
• Choose the best 3rd-placed teams that will actually advance to the knockouts.
• Simulate every single match all the way to the final.
• Generate a unique link to save your grid and share it with friends (or prove them wrong later).

Early stats from our users show that everyone is predictably backing Spain and Portugal. Meanwhile, our admin is out here manually dragging Norway to the trophy (delusion is a powerful thing, we know).

The tool is completely free, doesn't require any annoying sign-ups, and is fully available in 6 languages (English, French, Arabic, German, Italian, and Spanish).

Create your bracket here: https://bracket-challenge.tribuna.com/en.