It was only supposed to be the group stage. Six days into the 2026 World Cup — a tournament that has expanded to 48 nations, stretched across three countries and 16 cities, and arrived carrying the weight of every hyperbolic promise FIFA has made about it — something happened that nobody quite expected: the football was genuinely, undeniably brilliant.
Three of the sport’s most written-about players — Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland — all delivered on the same Tuesday night, each breaking records in the process, as if choreographed for the closing act of an era. Meanwhile, four-time world champions Germany served notice with seven goals in their opener, and Spain, the highest-ranked team in the tournament, were quietly humbled by a Cape Verde side nobody had pencilled in as a spoiler. Six days in, and this already feels like a World Cup that won’t behave.
Germany’s Statement of Intent
Julian Nagelsmann’s Germany did not ease into this tournament. On Sunday, 14 June, they opened their Group E campaign against World Cup debutants Curaçao in Houston and produced a 7–1 demolition that was both ruthless and, at moments, genuinely beautiful. Felix Nmecha opened the scoring inside six minutes with a clipped finish off a Florian Wirtz combination; Kai Havertz added a penalty before half-time and completed a brace with a sublime chip late on; Jamal Musiala and Deniz Undav contributed their own, as did Nico Schlotterbeck and the emerging Nathaniel Brown.
There was a wobble — Curaçao’s Livano Comenencia equalised in the 21st minute, sending the Caribbean nation’s fans into a brief, euphoric frenzy and handing the debutants their first ever goal in the tournament. It was also the match’s most poignant moment: a country of fewer than 200,000 people, competing at the World Cup for the first time, and getting on the scoresheet against four-time world champions. Comenencia’s name belongs in the footnotes of this tournament’s history, regardless of what else follows.
But Germany’s response told you everything about where this team’s confidence currently sits. They finished the afternoon with 26 shots and an expected goals figure of 3.91 against Curaçao’s 0.4. Nagelsmann, 38 years old and still the tournament’s youngest coach, spoke afterwards about self-belief: “We needed this convincing win. The confidence was there, but it grew.” Across the Atlantic, European football fans will be watching carefully when Germany face Ivory Coast in Toronto on Saturday. That, unlike the Curaçao opener, will tell us rather more.
The Night of the Three Kings
If Sunday belonged to Germany, Tuesday the 16th belonged to the sport’s three most dominant individual forces, producing a sequence of events that would have felt contrived in a Netflix documentary. France played first in New Jersey, where Mbappé netted twice in a 3–1 win over Senegal — including, late in the second half, an extraordinary strike from 30 yards that moved him past Olivier Giroud to become France’s all-time leading scorer. The 25-year-old has now scored 14 goals at World Cups, placing him level with Gerd Müller in the all-time standings, behind only Messi, Miroslav Klose, and the Brazilian Ronaldo.
Then came Haaland. Norway’s first World Cup since 1998 began in Boston against Iraq, and the Manchester City striker marked his debut in the tournament with a brace in a first half that Norway thoroughly controlled, finishing 4–1. Haaland’s goals were characteristically efficient — opportunistic and well-timed — but it was the occasion itself that registered. For a generation of Norwegian fans, watching their team at a World Cup is something that has happened precisely once in their lifetimes. There was something quietly moving about the manner in which Solbakken’s side handled it: organised, direct, occasionally brilliant.
And then Messi, because it was always going to end with Messi. In Kansas City, Argentina opened their title defence against Algeria, and the 38-year-old captain scored the first hat trick of his World Cup career to send his country top of Group J with a 3–0 win. The goals were vintage: the first engineered with space Algeria should never have surrendered; the second a precise, unhurried finish; the third completing a record that the sport had spent 24 years regarding as untouchable. Messi now stands on 16 World Cup goals, level with Miroslav Klose as the all-time leader. He is, at 38, an active footballer competing in a World Cup and sitting atop the sport’s most prestigious individual statistical mountain.
What made Tuesday extraordinary was not any single result, but the confluence of the three. ESPN’s headline called it correctly: group stage days rarely get better than this.
France’s Revenge, and a Norway Question
France’s 3–1 win over Senegal carried its own historical charge. In 2002, it was Senegal who knocked France out of the group stage in one of the tournament’s greatest upsets. Mbappé was three years old. Now, as Les Bleus’ captain, he exacted revenge of a kind — though in truth, Senegal’s Ibrahim Mbaye pulled one back with a goal of genuine quality, and the first half had belonged to neither side. France’s second-half performance, anchored by Bradley Barcola and built on Mbappé’s increasingly confident movement, was the clearest articulation yet of what Didier Deschamps’ side might become if the attack clicks.
The prospect that has Deschamps most animated, however, is what awaits on June 26: Norway. France and Norway are in the same group, meaning Mbappé and Haaland are on a collision course. Both men have started the tournament with braces; both are commanding the attacking third with the kind of authority that makes defences look structurally inadequate. “It will be a great duel,” Deschamps told reporters, with characteristic French understatement. He is not wrong.
Spain’s Warning Shot
Not every European story this week has been one of dominance. Spain, ranked first in the world and widely regarded as one of the two or three most credible candidates for the title, were held to a goalless draw by Cape Verde on Monday in what CBS Sports reported as generating the most significant lost wager in the tournament’s history to that point. It was not that La Roja played badly — their possession was meticulous and their press well-structured — but Cape Verde absorbed it with the kind of low-block coherence that increasingly separates technically capable outsiders from the also-rans.
Spain have won the World Cup before — in 2010, with a final against the Netherlands that nobody who watched it has entirely forgotten — and they have the personnel to win it again. Lamine Yamal, still only 18, is already among the tournament’s most watchable players. But the Cape Verde draw is a useful reminder that this expanded, 48-team format punishes complacency in ways the old 32-team structure could absorb. Three points in the group stage now carry a different texture of pressure.
England and the Tuchel Question
England open their Group L campaign today, Wednesday the 17th, against Croatia in Arlington, Texas. For supporters with long memories, this pairing carries the residue of two semi-final losses — Euro 2018 and Euro 2020 — and the sense that Croatia, however diminished from their Luka Modrić peak, are never quite the side to underestimate. Thomas Tuchel’s England, whose qualifying campaign included a 5–0 demolition of Serbia, arrive with genuine attacking depth. Harry Kane, who scored in that qualifier, is a proven big-stage performer. Whether England’s defensive organisation under Tuchel has hardened into something durable is the more open question.
The pre-tournament metrics were generous to England. Opta’s model gives France a 14% probability of lifting the trophy, behind only Spain at 17%, with England third at 11.8%. Whether such figures mean anything — and a reasonable argument says they mean very little in a knockout tournament — the point is that the European contingent enter this World Cup as legitimate contenders rather than ceremonial participants. The expanded format guarantees every team three games; what it doesn’t guarantee is that the traditional powerhouses will take care of the details.
What the First Week Tells Us
Six days is not enough to draw a tournament’s shape, but it is enough to establish its mood. The 2026 World Cup, for all the commercial noise and logistical sprawl of its expanded format, has produced football that justifies the attention. Over 50 goals in the first 18 matches, only three games with one goal or fewer, and a Tuesday night in which three of the sport’s greatest living players all did something historic simultaneously. The knockout rounds begin on June 28. Between now and then, England face Croatia; Portugal open against DR Congo; Scotland play their first match. The European delegation is large and varied, its outcomes still unwritten.
But the week’s defining image remains Tuesday’s triple act: Mbappé curling it from distance in New Jersey, Haaland timing his run in Boston, Messi completing a hat trick in Kansas City at 38 years old. The game keeps staging its last rites. It has not learned how.
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