Football Extra Newsletter: World Cup group stage prediction results

The task seemed simple. The gauntlet was laid down. Some 22 of football's sharpest brains were asked to predict the finishing order of all 12 World Cup groups. However, as World Cup history tells us, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Think back to 2014, when Costa Rica topped a group that also featured Italy, England and Uruguay. Or 2022, when Germany lost to Japan to meekly exit at the group stage. How would the class of '26 fare? The scoring system for the game was simple. Correctly predict the 1-4 finishing order of a group to score 10 points. Placing two teams accurately in the final standings scored 5 points. And then one point for having just one team in their final correct position. The final results showcased how a few pre-tournament assumptions didn't come to pass. Of the 22 entrants, every person predicted Cape Verde would come bottom of their group. But the Blue Sharks drew all their games, to qualify in second place , behind Spain and reach the knockout phase. To be fair, all 22 also predicted Curacao, Iraq and Jordan would also finish bottom of their groups, which they duly did. Which groups were easiest to predict? The easiest group to predict correctly turned out to be Group C . 15 of the 22 entrants rightly predicted the final order of 'Brazil, Morocco, Scotland, Haiti'. The joint-second easiest groups to get right were Group E (finishing order of Germany, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, Curacao) and Group J (Argentina, Austria, Algeria, Jordan) with 13 of the 22 making that correct prediction. As for the toughest groups to call, Group D always looked tight, with just 24 places in the Fifa World Rankings separating USA (17), Turkey (22), Australia (27) and Paraguay (41) when the tournament kicked off. And so it proved, not one of the 22 competitors correctly predicted the final group order of 'USA, Australia, Paraguay, Turkey'. Turkey proved to be one of the biggest under-achievers at the World Cup, with 14 of 22 predicting they would win the group. They finished bottom after opening defeats by Australia and Paraguay. However, that wasn't the only group where not one person predicted the correct final order. Group A proved an outlier, with South Africa surprising everybody by finishing second, and South Korea third. And Group H was similar, with Uruguay under-performing, and Cape Verde finishing second. Did the FIFA rankings match up with what happened? If you took your final group predictions from the Fifa rankings published on the opening day the tournament , only three of the 12 finished in that statistical order – Group C (Brazil etc), Group F (Netherlands etc) and Group J (Argentina etc). And in five groups, the lowest-ranked side managed to qualify for the knockout stages – Paraguay (41), South Africa (60), Bosnia-Herzegovina (64), Cape Verde (67) and Ghana (73). The highest-ranked teams not to make progress out of the group stage were Uruguay (16), Iran (20), Turkey (22) and South Korea (25). So who won the prediction competition? As for the final results, congratulations to John Acres , BBC Radio Devon presenter and football commentator who scored 82 points out of a possible 120. John correctly predicted the finishing order of six of the 12 groups, including England's group L (which only three other entrants managed to do). In second place on 78 points is the former Bradford City, Rochdale and Lincoln City midfielder Peter Costello . Peter scored seven correct final group standings, but couldn't make up the points elsewhere to finish at the top of the table. Football Extra's regular writer and former Scotland international Pat Nevin finished in sixth place, having correctly predicted how four of the groups would finish up. Football Extra's other regular scribes, George Mills and Jon Barbuti, finished joint eighth and joint 18th respectively. The final standings: 82 points - John Acres (BBC Radio Devon) 78 - Peter Costello (former Bradford and Rochdale midfielder) 77 - Cedric Ayres 73 - Phil Wye 71 - Giles Goford 64 - Pat Nevin (former Scotland international and Football Extra writer) 63 - Mitch Cook (former Scarborough and Blackpool midfielder) 62 - George Mills (Football Extra writer) 62 - Phil Lovelace 61 - Mike Thompson 60 - Garry Thompson (former Coventry, Aston Villa and West Brom striker) 58 - Garreth Roberts (former Hull City midfielder) 58 - Nick Punal (presenter of 'Nick's World of Football' podcast) 58 - Rich Harwin 55 - Richard Foster (presenter of 'It Started with a Kick' podcast) 54 - Louise Taffa (Australian football journalist) 53 - Dave Puckett (former Southampton and Bournemouth striker) 52 - Jon Barbuti (Football Extra writer) 52 - Chris Cooper (BBC Radio Humberside presenter and Senior Lecturer) 44 - Alistair Bruce-Ball (BBC Radio 5Live commentator and presenter) 44 - Rolf Hessebrugge (German football journalist) 38 - Graham Lambert (Inspiral Carpets founder and lead guitarist) Congratulations to John Acres , the 2026 Fifa Men's World Cup Football Extra group predictor champion!