Liverpool Players at the World Cup: Key Matches and Expectations
The World Cup is back, bigger than ever and stretched across the USA, Canada and Mexico – and Liverpool’s fingerprints are all over it.
With 48 nations involved and the group stage kicking off on Thursday, the club’s players are scattered across continents, storylines and expectations. Some arrive as champions, some as captains, some as debutants desperate to make a mark.
All of them carry Anfield with them.
(All kick-off times are BST.)
Alisson Becker (Brazil)
For Alisson, this is familiar territory. A third World Cup, another shot with the five-time champions, another summer where Brazil expect, not hope.
He is set to be the first Liverpool player to step onto the pitch at this expanded edition, installed once again as the man behind the Selecao’s shimmering attacking talent. Former Red Fabinho, now at Al-Ittihad, also makes Carlo Ancelotti’s 26-man squad, a reminder of the Liverpool spine that once was.
Brazil’s Group C schedule is laced with intrigue. They open against 2022 semi-finalists Morocco, a side that no longer sneaks up on anyone. Then comes Haiti, a game Brazil will be expected to control from the first whistle. The group phase ends with a meeting against Andy Robertson’s Scotland, a fixture that drips with Premier League familiarity and subplots.
Brazil’s fixtures
- v Morocco – June 13, 11pm
- v Haiti – June 20, 1.30am
- v Scotland – June 24, 11pm
Wataru Endo (Japan)
Wataru Endo arrives at this World Cup with a captain’s armband and a scar or two from the journey. A foot injury with Liverpool in February threatened his place at the tournament. He refused to let it.
"It wasn't an easy way to recover from the injury but I believed in myself to make this happen and will keep working hard to get fit for the games," he said when Japan’s squad was announced. That line tells you everything about him: understated, relentless, unshaken.
Now 33, Endo leads a Japan side that knows how to bloody the nose of giants. At the last World Cup, the Samurai Blue fought their way out of a group containing Spain and Germany, only to fall to Croatia on penalties in the Round of 16. That memory still stings.
This time, Group F offers a different kind of test – and a distinctly Liverpool flavour. Japan face the Netherlands first, then Tunisia, then Sweden. In that opening game alone, Endo could find himself staring across at three club teammates in orange. Friendship pauses for 90 minutes.
Japan’s fixtures
- v Netherlands – June 14, 9pm
- v Tunisia – June 21, 5am
- v Sweden – June 26, 12am
Cody Gakpo, Ryan Gravenberch and Virgil van Dijk (Netherlands)
The Dutch contingent arrives in waves of orange.
Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo know this stage. They reached the quarter-finals in Qatar, only to be knocked out on penalties by eventual champions Argentina. The shootout still hangs over that generation. For Ryan Gravenberch, this is all new – a first World Cup, a first chance to translate potential into something more tangible under the unforgiving glare of a global audience.
Gakpo’s last World Cup was a personal breakthrough. He scored in all three of the Netherlands’ group-stage matches, his form helping to accelerate his move from PSV Eindhoven to Liverpool a month later. He doesn’t arrive as a surprise package now. He arrives as a marked man, expected to deliver.
The Netherlands open their campaign against Endo’s Japan, a game that stitches together Anfield’s dressing room in unfamiliar colours. Sweden follow, then Tunisia. It’s a group the Oranje will believe they can control, but they know how quickly a World Cup can twist.
Netherlands’ fixtures
- v Japan – June 14, 9pm
- v Sweden – June 20, 6pm
- v Tunisia – June 26, 12am
Alexander Isak (Sweden)
For Alexander Isak, this is a long-awaited step onto the biggest stage.
Sweden missed out in 2022. The wait has sharpened the appetite. They squeezed into the 2026 tournament via the play-offs, their route secured through their UEFA Nations League ranking rather than a straightforward qualifying campaign. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was enough.
Isak arrives as one of the faces of this Swedish side, a forward whose club form has dragged his name into the elite conversation. Now he has a World Cup to match the reputation.
Graham Potter’s story adds another layer. Initially appointed as head coach on a short-term basis back in October, his deal was extended until 2030 in March, a sign of the federation’s faith in his methods. Stability at the top, responsibility on the pitch.
Sweden face Tunisia first, then that heavyweight clash with the Netherlands, before closing against Endo’s Japan. By then, their fate may hang on a single moment in either penalty area.
Sweden’s fixtures
- v Tunisia – June 15, 3am
- v Netherlands – June 20, 6pm
- v Japan – June 26, 12am
Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina)
Alexis Mac Allister walks into this tournament as a reigning world champion. That changes everything.
Four years ago, he started the 2022 World Cup on the bench for Argentina’s shock 2-1 defeat by Saudi Arabia. From there, he never looked back. Then at Brighton & Hove Albion, he forced his way into Lionel Scaloni’s XI and stayed there, starting the next six games on the road to glory.
Now he returns as a central piece of a side chasing history. Argentina are aiming to become just the third country to win back-to-back men’s World Cups. Only Italy, in 1934 and 1938, and Brazil, in 1958 and 1962, have done it. That’s the scale of the task.
Lionel Messi, at 38, captains his nation into his sixth World Cup. Every minute he plays will feel like borrowed time to a global audience that knows the end is coming, just not when. Mac Allister’s job is to help make sure that final chapter is written in gold, not regret.
Argentina open Group J against Algeria, then face Austria and Jordan. On paper, it’s a group they should navigate. On the pitch, they know better than anyone that nothing is guaranteed.
Argentina’s fixtures
- v Algeria – June 17, 2am
- v Austria – June 22, 6pm
- v Jordan – June 28, 3am
From Alisson’s calm in Brazil’s goal to Mac Allister’s poise in Argentina’s midfield, from Endo’s leadership with Japan to the Dutch and Swedish battles laced with Liverpool subplots, this World Cup will unfold with a heavy Anfield accent.
The only question now is which of them will still be standing when the lights dim on North America next summer.
