sport news World Cup: Messi, Mbappe, Fernandes make best group stage XI but zero England ... trends now

World-leading superstars Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe are the biggest names in the best team of the World Cup group stages.

The PSG team-mates were instrumental in inspiring Argentina and France respectively into the knockout stages. 

And Sofascore, revealing their best-performing XI from the group matches at the Qatar tournament, named Bruno Fernandes as the standout player with an 8.6 rating out of 10 - but did not put any England players in the line-up.

Portugal and Manchester United star Fernandes is one of three players to receive an average rating of more than eight out of 10, alongside goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny and France's Antoine Griezmann.

The attacking midfielder played 90 minutes in the first two games of the tournament for Fernando Santos' men, helping his side beat Ghana 3-2 in their opening clash before scoring a double in a 2-0 win against Uruguay.

With Portugal already qualified for the knockout stages, he was then rested for the final group game, a 2-1 loss against South Korea which saw the Asian outfit progress in second place in Group H.

Messi, with a 7.93 rating, was a talismanic figure for Argentina as they progressed as group winners too, scoring a penalty in their 2-1 defeat at the hands of Saudi Arabia before netting the opener in a 2-0 win over Mexico. 

He was also excellent in the 2-0 win against Poland which secured their place in the knockout stages, despite seeing a penalty saved. 

Mbappe (7.53), meanwhile, scored three times in Les Bleus' first two games, wins against Australia and Denmark, before being used as a sub in their 1-0 loss to Tunisia. 

Elsewhere in the side, there are a couple of surprises, with Sofascore's own clarification being that only players who had played 60 per cent of minutes across the group phase were

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