Happy Almost-Two-Weeks-Into-the-World-Cup Day everyone! Last week we again posted a sponsored poll that we hope was fun for those who participated. Now you get to see the results!
Your favorite match from World Cup Week 1
Considering a) this blog’s readership is probably 2/3rds American (and most of the rest English), and b) how novel it was to see the USMNT actually truck someone in a major soccer competition, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at these poll results. And yet — I am, just a little bit! I do wish I had some extra detail about who voted in the “Other” and what they voted for, but I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with that mystery. But yeah, both of these matches were super fun, if you are a USMNT or England fan. If you root for Croatia or Paraguay, then probably not so much.
Worst team showing in the first match
Again, not really a surprise I guess? Cape Verde came out of nowhere to draw the presumptive World Cup favorites in the first week. But now that we’ve seen Cape Verde draw Uruguay in the same group I wonder if people would retroactively change their vote if we were doing it now. Cape Verde might just be a pretty good international football team this cycle!
Portugal coming in second surprises me a bit, only because Tunisia lost 5-1 to Sweden in their opening match and fired their head coach! Kinda hard to top that in my mind, unless you’re really enjoying the Cristiano Ronaldo schadenfreude. Which I am. He was really bad, and Portugal were basically playing with ten men.
Best individual performance in Week 1
The old man’s still got it (shhhh don’t mention what’s already happened to him vs. Austria). Lionel Messi scoring the first hat trick of the World Cup probably shouldn’t have been surprising, and yet it kind of was. I was expecting more love for Vozinha after making save after save for Cape Verde, but I guess he is getting his flowers coming second in the polling to the GOAT. There were some other players that we could’ve included that played well but didn’t have the gaudy scoring or save numbers — those hipster picks might be included in the Other category. Still, kinda hard to overlook Messi scoring three in a game.
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed the polls. There will likely be a couple more like this over the coming weeks.
