Portugal's Ricardo Quaresma, left, celebrates with Cristiano Ronaldo. Photo / AP Photo
Portugal's Ricardo Quaresma, left, celebrates with Cristiano Ronaldo. Photo / AP Photo
The World Cup is on a break for one day, giving us time to catch up on much-needed sleep and hand out completely meaningless and made-up awards.
So here it is, the best from what has been a fantastic World Cup group stage:
Best team
Winner: Brazil
Croatia and Belgium have both been pretty good but it's hard to look past Brazil. The most impressive thing about this Brazilian side has been their defensive organisation. Sure, their attacking foursome of Neymar, Philippe Coutinho, Gabriel Jesus and Willian is as good as any in the tournament, but their defensive nous under coach Tite is what makes them scary. Casemiro and Paulinho have been a calming force in midfield while Thiago Silva is back to his best in defence. They're capable of outplaying any side but are also happy to sit back and defend when needed, and unleash a punishing counter attack. And they've yet to hit top gear.
1. Brazil 2. Croatia 3. Belgium 4. France 5. Spain 6. Uruguay 7. England 8. Portugal 9. Colombia 10. Mexico 11. Switzerland 12. Argentina 13. Russia 14. Sweden 15. Denmark 16. Japan
Neymar carried by the rest of his teammates through the group stage. Photo / Getty
Best player
Honourable mentions: Philippe Coutinho (Brazil), Harry Kane (England), Diego Godin (Uruguay).
Croatia have been one of the surprises of the tournament, thanks in large part to their midfield partnership of Modric and Ivan Rakitic. Modric in particular has been exceptional, typified in his performance in Croatia's 3-0 demolition of Argentina where he pitched in with a trademark strike – one of his two goals at the tournament so far. Modric and his Croatian team are geniune dark horses, especially being on the "weaker" side of the draw.
“Can’t believe Luka Modric, widely hailed as one of the best midfielders in the world by everyone for the last eight years, and a four time CL winner, is so underrated.”
Honourable mentions: Nacho, Portugal v Spain, June 16; Toni Kroos, Germany v Sweden, June 23; Ricardo Quaresma, Portugal v Iran, June 26.
Winner: Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal v Spain, June 16
This goal – a picture perfect free kick which gave Ronaldo an 88th minute hat-trick against Spain – could be remembered as the moment the tide of opinion in the greatest-of-all-time debate started to shift from Lionel Messi to Ronaldo.
Moments often define sporting narratives – think LeBron's block or Tiger's ridiculous chip. This goal may or may not be that moment for Ronaldo, but it definitely got the ball rolling in his favour.
The one thing Ronaldo has always had over Messi has been his success at multiple clubs and at the international stage – something this World Cup has only emphasised. Messi is probably still the best footballer to step foot on planet earth, but Ronaldo might have the better GOAT resume.
The Russian World Cup script writers have also teed up a potentially delicious quarter-final between Argentina and Portugal, where Messi and Ronaldo could face off in a matchup for the ages. Long live the pointless, never-ending GOAT debate.
Best own goal
The likes of Harry Kane and Romelu Lukaku will have to step it up if they are to catch Own Goal, the current leader in the race for the golden boot. Own Goal (aka OG) is having a historic tournament with a whopping nine goals so far, obliterating the previous World Cup record of six – and we've still yet to reach the knockout stages!
Here are all the (big name) scorers so far: Aziz Bouhaddouz, Aziz Behich, Oghenekaro Etebo, Thiago Cionek, Ahmed Fathi, Denis Cheryshev, Edson Álvarez, Yann Sommer, Yassine Meriah.
Winner: Yann Sommer, Switzerland v Costa Rica, June 28
