World Cup 2022 group stage awards

The memories of South Africa 2010 must have been quaking in their boots when they saw Qatar 2022 rock up as a contender to take their title of ‘worst World Cup ever’.

But that hasn’t been the case thus far. Every group game had meaning to it and every team has had something to fight for. The football hasn’t been amazing, but the drama certainly has been.

Here are 90min’s awards for the best of the World Cup group stages.

According to my very complex algorithms, metrics and models (the group stage points tallies and goal difference), the best team across the opening three matches was…England?! Who’s been screwing with this thing?

Honourable mentions: Netherlands, Morocco

The problem with this group stage is not one single team claimed all nine points available. In terms of trying to map out contenders and forming opinions on an inner circle of would-be champions, that’s really annoying.

If we then just judge the best teams on two of their three games, then the most promising team was probably champions France, who came from behind to demolish Australia and beat Denmark for the first time in three attempts this year.

Honourable mentions: Brazil, Portugal, Argentina

Again, not one team just steamrolling their way through the groups makes this tougher to nail down.

If you close your eyes and try to imagine the most dominant player at this World Cup so far though, it’s probably Kylian Mbappe.

These last two awards make it seem like France have been some all-conquering beast, but that’s not the case – it’s just been quite an even tournament.

Honourable mentions: Cody Gakpo, Alvaro Morata, Casemiro, Bruno Fernandes

Decreed as officially the most unlikely of victories ever at a World Cup, Saudi Arabia’s opening win against tournament favourites Argentina will go down as an immortal achievement.

Herve Renard rocked up in his muscle-fit white shirt and inspired the Green Falcons to a victory thought to be verging on impossible.

Honourable mentions: Germany 1-2 Japan, Japan 2-1 Spain, Belgium 0-2 Morocco

Have you considered doing your job, Cristia- no, wait, we’ve been here before.

For the most part, the strongest sides and leading contenders got through their groups with…