World Cup 2026 Team of the Group Stage

Vozinha saved everything that mattered against Spain, a 40-year-old who spent last season in the Portuguese second division and on the 15th of June faced 27 shots from the European champions and conceded none of them, holding Spain to a goalless draw on Cape Verde's first appearance at a World Cup. The seven saves earned him the player of the match award, and they helped carry the smallest nation ever to reach the knockout rounds, a country of half a million people, into the last 32 without winning a single game.

The one person he most wanted there could not come. His mother stayed in Cape Verde for the Spain game, unable to reach the United States in time, and he spoke afterwards about her absence more than his own night. “My mum could not be here, for a visa issue, and the money we had to pay for it,” he said. That is the goalkeeper at the front of the team of the group stage, and the group stage was full of nights like his: the superstars delivered and the records fell, but the moments that stayed came from everywhere.

Two of the four defenders in this team scored in the group stage, and both of them are full-backs. Achraf Hakimi captained Morocco through three games without defeat, and against Haiti he scored once and set up another, racing forward from right-back to drag his side level and then crossing for Ismael Saibari, as the Atlas Lions recovered from two deficits to run out 4-2 winners and finish second behind Brazil. On the other flank, Nuno Mendes curled a free kick into the bottom corner against Uzbekistan inside the opening 20 minutes, one moment in a 5-0 win that confirmed Portugal as the more dangerous of the two Iberian sides at this tournament.

The centre-backs come from the two meanest defences of the first round. Johan Vásquez anchored a Mexico side that won all three group games for the first time in the country's history and did not concede a single goal, edging South Korea, seeing off South Africa and then taking Czechia apart 3-0. Lisandro Martínez did similar work for Argentina, who topped their group with three wins and conceded only once, a consolation for Jordan in a game the holders had already settled. Two defences, one goal conceded between them across six matches, and the spine of a back four that barely had to break stride.

Ayyoub Bouaddi turned 18 last October, and in Morocco's opening game he sat in front of the defence against a Brazil midfield of Casemiro, Bruno Guimarães and Lucas Paquetá and ran the game from the base of it. Casemiro was hauled off at half-time as Morocco held the five-time champions to a 1-1 draw, and the Lille teenager did not look out of place against that company once across the group stage.

His midfield partner here spent the group stage on the other side of that argument. Bruno Guimarães set up both goals in Brazil's 3-0 win over Scotland, drifting across the pitch to deliver the cross for Vinícius Júnior's header and the pass that released Matheus Cunha, and Brazil topped the group Morocco could not. The man unlucky to miss out sits on the bench: Michael Olise finished the group stage with three assists, as many as anyone at the tournament, having teed up Mbappé's opener against Senegal on his World Cup debut. In a team with Messi at number 10 and three forwards in front of him, there was simply no room.

Lionel Messi scored six times in the group stage and became the outright leading scorer in World Cup history, on 19 goals, more than Klose, more than Ronaldo, more than anyone who has played at the tournament. He opened with a hat-trick against Algeria, added two against Austria, and even when Argentina rested him against Jordan with qualification already secured, he came off the bench in the 60th minute and curled in a free kick 20 minutes later. He is the first player to score in seven consecutive World Cup matches, and at 39 he is appearing in a record sixth tournament. The inevitability that has followed him for two decades has not loosened its grip.

The three forwards in front of him scored 12 goals between them and would walk into any side at this World Cup. Kylian Mbappé scored four and became France's all-time leading scorer, the record goal a 30-yard strike in stoppage time against Senegal.

Ousmane Dembélé stole the show his teammate was meant to headline, completing a hat-trick inside the first 32 minutes against Norway, the second fastest in World Cup history. He was unsatisfied even so. “I'm happy, it's a unique and important moment for me,” he said. “My performance was good, but I preferred my match against Senegal or against Iraq.”

Vinícius Júnior scored in all three of Brazil's games, the fifth Brazilian to do so after Jairzinho, Romário, Ronaldo and Rivaldo, each of whom went on to lift the trophy. “He is one of the best players in the world,” Carlo Ancelotti said of him.

Erling Haaland scored four goals in two games and starts on the bench. Norway rested him for their final group game with qualification secure, and a brace against Iraq and a brace against Senegal were enough to make him one of the leading scorers at the tournament and still not enough to move Mbappé. That is the kind of group stage it was at the top of the pitch.

The rest of the bench is built the same way. Alisson kept clean sheets in the wins over Haiti and Scotland, Denzel Dumfries set up two goals in the Netherlands' 5-1 win over Sweden, and Daniel Muñoz scored in both of Colombia's victories as they topped their group ahead of Portugal. Rúben Dias and Vitinha give Portugal two more, the defender for his clean sheets and the midfielder for keeping the ball better than almost anyone, while Felix Nmecha scored Germany's first goal of the tournament and laid on the winner against Ivory Coast. And Ismael Saibari of PSV scored three times for Morocco, including a chip over Alisson that put Brazil on the back foot inside half an hour.

Argentina face Cape Verde in the last 32 on the 3rd of July, and the draw has put the two ends of this team in the same fixture. Vozinha is 40 and, for now, without a club. Messi is 39 and has a record sixth World Cup, a mark he extended in his last appearance.

One of them goes home that night. The group stage rewarded the unlikeliest and the most inevitable in equal measure, a 40-year-old debutant and a 39-year-old who has run out of records to break, and it has handed them each other in the first knockout round. The keeper kept the European champions out. Now he has to do the same to the only man who has ever scored 19 World Cup goals.

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