FIFA World Cup 2026 · Groups A–L · June 11–17, 2026
All 24 Results. Every Hot Take. A Couch With a Lot to Answer For.
Twenty-four matches. Twelve groups. One inflatable recliner that genuinely believed it knew things. Matchday 1 of the 2026 World Cup is finally, mercifully complete, and if there's a single throughline connecting Mexico City to Toronto to Vancouver to Foxborough, it's this: the couch got got almost everything right as usual, well at least 50% of the time, and four entire countries scored their first-ever World Cup goal in the space of one week. We're calling that a coincidence. We are not calling it a coincidence that all four of them still lost or drew.
This is the first of three Matchday Reviews we'll be running this tournament — group by group, hot take by hot take, prediction by humiliating prediction. Consider it Episode 1. Here's everything that happened, what it means, and exactly how wrong the Couch was about most of it.
And four nations scored their first-ever World Cup goal this week: Curaçao, population roughly 150,000 and the smallest nation ever to qualify; DR Congo; Jordan; and Uzbekistan. None of the four won the match they scored it in. All four deserved better than we're about to give them in this review, and we're going to give them plenty.
Oh, and the Couch picked the correct match winner in 11 of the 22 games - that amazing 50% stat is mathematically, a coin flip with extra steps. We'll get to that. We have an entire section about it. Anyone else would be embarrassed by the section. But not the Galáctico, who built it anyway.
Mexico opened the tournament how Mexico opens everything at the Azteca — a Quiñones strike, a Raúl Jiménez goal that ties him with Borgetti as Mexico's joint-second all-time scorer, and total chaos around the edges, capped by three red cards in the same match. We predicted 2-0 exactly and are taking the win, undefeated and insufferable about it. South Korea, meanwhile, beat Czechia 2-1 despite Son Heung-min not scoring a single goal — he just spent ninety minutes forcing saves out of a goalkeeper having the worst night of his year, then watched substitute Oh Hyeon-gyu score the winner fourteen minutes after coming on. Mexico and South Korea both sit on three points, Czechia and South Africa on none. Group A is wide open, which is sports-journalist code for "we have no idea."
Canada drew Bosnia 1-1 in the first men's World Cup match ever played on Canadian soil, and somehow that's the feel-good story of the group: Canada's first World Cup point in forty years, scored by substitute Cyle Larin a hundred and twenty-one seconds after he stepped onto the pitch, with Alphonso Davies and a benched Edin Džeko both watching from the sidelines for very different reasons. Qatar drew Switzerland 1-1 despite an expected-goals gap so lopsided (3.24 to 0.76) that we predicted Switzerland 2-0 and felt good about it right up until Qatar's captain headed in an equalizer in the ninetieth-plus-fifth minute. Four teams, four points apiece, four draws. Group B has told us nothing and we respect that.
Scotland beat Haiti 1-0 in Haiti's first-ever World Cup match — a deflected Stuart McGinn winner that's also Scotland's first World Cup win since 1990 — and that result alone is enough to put them top of Group C on points, which is a sentence we are going to enjoy typing exactly once before reality reasserts itself. We called Scotland to win 2-0; getting the winner right and the score wrong is, frankly, the most accurate the Couch got all week. Elsewhere, Brazil and Morocco traded goals in a 1-1 draw that the 82,500 people at MetLife Stadium will remember mostly for Neymar's substitute cameo — Neymar Watch is officially open — and for Brahim Díaz quietly looking like the best player on the pitch in yellow. Scotland lead. Let them have it.
We predicted USA 2-0 over Paraguay. The USA won 4-1, their biggest-ever World Cup scoreline, with Folarin Balogun becoming the first American to score twice in a single World Cup match since 1930. We predicted Türkiye to beat Australia 2-1. Australia won 2-0, with twenty-year-old Nestory Irankunda becoming the youngest-ever Socceroos World Cup scorer and busting out a Tim Cahill tribute celebration for a country that wasn't entirely sure it remembered Tim Cahill. Wrong winner. Wrong scoreline. Wrong everything, in both matches, in opposite directions. USA and Australia sit level on three points, and the Couch has no further comment at this time.
Germany's 7-1 demolition of Curaçao — the smallest nation ever to qualify, doing it with a population you could fit in a mid-size football stadium — featured a Kai Havertz brace, a Jamal Musiala goal, and Curaçao's own first-ever World Cup goal from Tjaronn Comenecia, which got buried under the rest of the scoreline in every recap except this one. We had Germany at 4-0 and feel a little embarrassed about underselling it. Meanwhile Ivory Coast snapped Ecuador's nineteen-game unbeaten run with a ninetieth-minute Amad Diallo finish after both sides hit the crossbar a combined three times — we picked Ecuador to win and got benched for it. Germany top the group on a ludicrous +6 goal difference, with Ivory Coast right behind them, and the two meet each other next. That's already a Group E decider in the making.
Netherlands and Japan traded leads twice in a 2-2 draw that nobody saw fully coming, but the real story of Group F is Sweden putting five past Tunisia, including a Yasin Ayari brace of two genuine stunners, a Viktor Gyökeres goal, and a Mathias Svanberg strike scored eighteen seconds after coming on as a substitute — one of the fastest sub-impact goals in World Cup history. We predicted Sweden 2-0. They won 5-1. That's the second time on Matchday 1 alone that getting the winner right still left us looking foolish, and we are starting to notice a pattern.
Belgium and Egypt drew 1-1 in what might be remembered as the last World Cup of Kevin De Bruyne's career for Belgium's golden generation — Mohamed Ashour's long-range strike canceled out by a Romelu Lukaku-induced own goal twenty-two seconds after Lukaku himself came off the bench. We had Belgium winning 2-1 and got half credit for the goal tally, none for the result. The real headline, though, is Elijah Just — a Motherwell forward nobody outside New Zealand had strong opinions about a month ago — scoring twice to drag New Zealand level with Iran at 2-2 and completely upstaging the much-hyped Mehdi Taremi. We predicted Iran 2-0 and got Iran's two goals exactly right while missing New Zealand's two goals entirely, which is either half a good prediction or a complete one depending on how generous you're feeling toward us.
Group H gave us a 1-1, another 1-1, and a 0-0, and somehow the 0-0 is the most talked-about match of Matchday 1. Spain took twenty-seven shots at Cape Verde and scored zero goals, with forty-year-old Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha making seven saves — the most by a keeper that age in a World Cup match since Pat Jennings stopped ten at forty-one in 1986. We predicted Spain 3-0. We are calling that the single biggest miss of Matchday 1, and we're not going to argue with anyone who disagrees. Saudi Arabia, for their part, led Uruguay for thirty-nine minutes before settling for a 1-1 draw, continuing Group H's apparent house rule that nobody fancied is allowed to win comfortably. Every team in the group has exactly one point. Group H is a monument to the stalemate.
France beat Senegal 3-1 behind a Kylian Mbappé brace that included the goal making him France's all-time leading scorer — fifty-eight international goals, past Olivier Giroud — followed immediately by a Bradley Barcola chip and a late Senegal consolation that we did not see coming. We had France 2-0 and underestimated both the margin and the historical subplot, which is becoming a theme for us. Norway, meanwhile, beat Iraq 4-1 behind an Erling Haaland brace inside his first World Cup match, and we'd predicted Iraq 0-4 — winner, margin, and Norway's goal tally all landed almost exactly, missing only Iraq's late consolation goal. That's as close as a prediction gets on this couch, and we're going to enjoy it for the eleven minutes it lasts. Norway top the group on goal difference over France; Senegal and Iraq are both pointless.
Argentina beat Algeria 3-0 behind a Lionel Messi hat-trick that made him the oldest player ever to score multiple goals in a single World Cup match, eclipsing Roger Milla's Italia '90 heroics, and drew him level with Klose's all-time scoring record. We called Argentina 2-0 and nailed the winner and the clean sheet — we just didn't dare predict a thirty-eight-year-old hat-trick for the history books, and frankly neither did anyone else. Austria beat Jordan 3-1 in a match far tighter than the score suggests, featuring a disallowed Austria goal overturned on review, Jordan's Yazeed Olwan scoring Jordan's first-ever World Cup goal in their first-ever finals appearance, and a stoppage-time VAR penalty to settle it. We had Austria 2-0 and were off by one goal on both sides — close, but no Jordanian history credited. Argentina lead Austria on goal difference; Jordan and Algeria are both pointless, though only one of them leaves with a goal that means something.
Portugal drew DR Congo 1-1 in DR Congo's first-ever World Cup match, with João Neves heading Portugal in front before Yoane Wissa equalized in the ninetieth-plus-fifth minute for DR Congo's first-ever World Cup goal and first-ever World Cup point — Cristiano Ronaldo started, became the oldest outfield player to ever do so, and didn't score. We had Portugal winning 3-0 with a Ronaldo goal inside thirty-three minutes. Clean miss, all the way down. Colombia then closed out the group with a 3-1 win over Uzbekistan that was really a tale of two goalkeeping errors and one genuinely great winger: Luis Díaz set up Daniel Muñoz for the opener, Colombia's own keeper Camilo Vargas gifted Abbosbek Fayzullaev an open net for Uzbekistan's first-ever World Cup goal, and Díaz then scored himself before Jáminton Campaz headed home in stoppage time. We had Uzbekistan losing 0-3 and got the margin almost exactly right while missing the entire goalkeeping-blunder subplot — partial credit, and we'll take it. Colombia sit alone on top with three points; Portugal and DR Congo share second on one apiece; Uzbekistan leave Matchday 1 with nothing in the table and a goal that means more to an entire country than the table ever will.
England beat Croatia 4-2 in Thomas Tuchel's first match in charge, and "beat" undersells just how little control England had over the first half: a Harry Kane penalty saved, retaken on a VAR review, and scored; a Martin Baturina equalizer; a second Kane goal; and a second Croatia equalizer from Petar Musa in the forty-fifth-plus-fifth minute, leaving it 2-2 at the break before Jude Bellingham and Marcus Rashford pulled England clear in the second half. We predicted a routine England 2-0. We were not in the same stadium as that prediction. Ghana, meanwhile, got outplayed for almost the entire match by Panama — Panama led 64% first-half possession and out-passed Ghana 291 to 171 with three shots to none — and still found a way to lose 0-1, with Caleb Yirenkyi scoring Ghana's latest-ever World Cup winner in the ninetieth-plus-fifth minute after substitute goalkeeper Benjamin Asare came on for an injured Ati Zigi and made three saves to protect the lead that didn't exist yet. We predicted a 1-1 draw. Panama never even scored. Sometimes the best team on the pitch isn't the team that wins, and sometimes the Couch should stop predicting draws.
Four nations scored their first-ever World Cup goal across these twenty-four matches. None of them won. Three of them lost. One of them got a draw out of it. All four of those goals will be replayed in those countries for decades, regardless of what the final score said — and that's worth remembering on a day when we're mostly here to make fun of a couch's prediction record.
Across the 22 matches where we're on record with a winner pick, the Couch went 11-11. Eleven correct. Eleven wrong. That is, for the mathematically inclined, exactly fifty percent — the same hit rate you'd get flipping a coin, except the coin doesn't have to write three paragraphs explaining itself afterward.
And it's worse than 11-11 looks. Of the eleven we got "right," at least six were only right on the winner and badly wrong on the margin — Germany, Sweden, England, the USA, and Austria all won by more than we predicted, in some cases by a lot. So roughly a quarter of our 22 calls were actually, fully, all-the-way correct. We are not proud of this report card. We are, however, extremely consistent about publishing it, which we have decided to count as a form of integrity.
Spain, Belgium, Iran, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Portugal all came in expected to win and left with a draw — six different draws against teams that were supposed to be the easier side of the fixture.
Larin, Oh Hyeon-gyu, Diallo, Svanberg, Lukaku's accidental assist, Barcola, and Asare's three saves were all difference-makers off the bench — a rate that should worry every manager waiting until the 70th minute to make a change.
Curaçao, DR Congo, Jordan, and Uzbekistan all leave Matchday 1 with at least one moment that will outlive the scoreline, even if the points table doesn't reflect it yet.