With the 2026 World Cup nearing its end and the final now set for Spain and Argentina on Sunday from New York, we took the chance early this week to look back at the tournament and ask Liverpool Offside readers which Red they felt has had the best individual tournament.
We expected it to be a battle between Alexis Mac Allister, the key workhorse in Argentina’s midfield on their way to a second final in a row and with a chance now to win back-to-back World Cups, and Cody Gakpo who exited on penalties in the Round of 32 with the Netherlands but who was his country’s top attacking threat through their tournament.
Now, we have the results for TLO’s latest SB Nation Reacts! poll, in partnership with FanDuel, and the answer is a clear win for Alexis Mac Allister.
Gakpo comes second, but it’s fairly distant and a quite comfortable plurality for Mac Allister, while Alexander Isak stood out as third most impressive Red at the World Cup to TLO readers.
We’ll find out on Sunday if Mac Allister and Argentina can go all the way again, though they’ll be underdogs against a Spanish side including new Liverpool signing Victor Muñoz—though Muñoz, who arrived at the World Cup carrying a minor knock, has yet to play a minute for the Iberian favourites.
Hopefully, whatever the result on Sunday, Mac Allister can bring something of his World Cup form back to Merseyside after what was a 2025-26 season that was so bad it had people wondering if the midfielder was still capable of playing top level football.
Now, instead the question for many Liverpool fans is whether Mac Allister was—subconsciously or otherwise—saving himself for Argentina’s World Cup title defence. Still, whatever the issues of last season, Mac Allister’s World Cup performances have been stellar.