The Touchline, a football analysis account with over 1.67 million followers, published its selection for the best XI players from the 2026 FIFA World Cup group stage on June 28. The post landed right as group play was wrapping up, with the knockout rounds looming.
The 2026 World Cup is co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico, and expanded to 48 teams for the first time, meaning significantly more matches, more data, and more opportunities for lesser-known players to make a case for themselves on the world’s biggest stage.
Picking a best XI from that expanded pool is a considerably harder exercise than it was in 2022 or 2018. The Touchline’s selection attempts to cut through that noise, identifying the eleven players who stood out most across the group stage that kicked off on June 11.
The account has built its reputation on exactly this kind of curation. With 1.67 million followers, The Touchline sits among the more influential football analysis voices on social media, regularly publishing team-specific best XIs and tactical breakdowns. Prior to this group stage composite, the account had posted individual best XIs for France on June 8 and Colombia on June 1, building toward this comprehensive selection.
The timing matters. June 28 puts this post right at the tail end of group stage action, meaning The Touchline had nearly the full dataset of group matches to work with before making its picks.
Look, this is a football story. The 2026 World Cup group stage has been a purely sporting affair, with coverage from outlets like ESPN and The Athletic focused entirely on the on-field product. No crypto sponsorship narratives, no blockchain ticketing angles, no fan token pump-and-dumps piggybacking on tournament hype.
That’s actually notable in itself. Fan tokens from platforms like Socios surged around the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The absence of similar activity in 2026 suggests that crypto’s sports marketing push has cooled considerably. For crypto investors who track brand exposure and adoption narratives, the World Cup serving as a crypto-free zone is a data point worth noting. It suggests that the sports sponsorship playbook that companies like FTX, Crypto.com, and others pursued aggressively in 2021-2022 has not been replicated at scale during this tournament cycle.
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