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Matchday 1 recap: three brackets already in tatters

One round in, and the league table already looks nothing like the rankings promised.

11 Jun 2026 · 3 min read

Matchday one is supposed to be the calm before the knockouts. Somebody forgot to tell the teams. Two favourites dropped points, one underdog ran riot, and a chunk of the field watched their carefully-built brackets wobble before the second weekend.

Who's smiling

The players sitting pretty aren't the ones who picked the most winners – they're the ones who left themselves room to be wrong. A bracket with one bold call and a sensible spine takes an opening-day shock far better than one stacked entirely on chalk.

Plenty of time left, of course. But if your league has a long memory, matchday one is exactly the kind of thing it never lets you forget.

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