Strategy
Seven Upsets in One Saturday: What It Does to a Pool
Read this post in: Português
On Saturday, August 22, the favourites fell in five leagues at once. Not a vibe — a list. Seven results, every one of them the wrong way round from what most people in most pools had written down.
If your group plays a weekly pool, this was the round that decided it. And almost nobody had it.
The seven
| League | Result | Why it counts as an upset |
|---|---|---|
| Premier League MD1 | Hull City 2-0 Manchester United | Newly promoted, back in the top flight after nine years, and they win on day one |
| Liga MX MD5 | Chivas 5-2 Tijuana | Chivas sat 10th on 7 points; Tijuana were 3rd and unbeaten, and a win would have put them level with the leaders |
| Liga MX MD5 | Cruz Azul 0-2 Atlas | The reigning champions, at home, losing a third straight match |
| LaLiga MD2 | Athletic Club 1-3 Sevilla | Athletic beaten by two goals at San Mamés |
| Premier League MD1 | Brentford 3-0 Tottenham | Three goals and no argument |
| Premier League MD1 | Nottingham Forest 0-1 Leeds | Another promoted side taking points on the road |
| Serie A MD1 | Parma 0-1 Cagliari | Settled by Alessandro Romano’s only goal at the Tardini |
Sources: Sky Sports and ESPN on Hull–United · El Universal on Chivas–Tijuana · El Universal on Cruz Azul–Atlas · laliga.com for the official LaLiga results · ESPN Deportes for the Premier League · Sky TG24 for Serie A.
Hull City is the one people will remember
Semi Ajayi scored on 17 minutes and Nobel Mendy on 38, both from set pieces, and Mendy’s came on his Premier League debut. Hull had been out of the top division for nine years. Manchester United had a full pre-season.
That is the sort of result that makes people say the league is unpredictable now. It isn’t, particularly. What it is, is a reminder that a promoted side’s first home game is the single most reliably mispriced fixture in any pool — everyone writes the big name in, nobody looks at who is actually motivated, and the whole group takes the same hit at the same time.
The part that makes this useful: the favourites didn’t all fall
This is where most “shock weekend” posts go wrong, so here is the other half of the same Saturday.
- Inter 4-1 Monza in their Serie A opener (inter.it)
- Bayern Munich 2-1 Borussia Dortmund in the Supercup, at the Signal Iduna Park (Sky Sports)
- Real Madrid won 1-2 away at Espanyol, Bellingham scoring on 9 minutes
So the lesson is not “stop picking favourites”. Inter, Bayern and Madrid all did exactly what the form book said. The lesson is narrower and more useful: the favourites didn’t all fail. Enough of them failed. Seven is well past the number any single person picks correctly, and well short of the number that would let you win by fading favourites across the board.
What that actually means for your picks
Three things worth taking out of a day like this.
A round of upsets is worth more than a round of certainties. If eleven of twelve fixtures go the obvious way, nobody in your group moves. The table separates on the rows where the group disagrees. Saturday handed out seven of those at once, which is why one person in your pool is now a long way clear and can’t quite explain it.
Promoted sides and openers are where the group is most identical. Hull–United, Forest–Leeds — two promoted teams took points and both were near-unanimous picks the other way. If you want an edge that costs nothing, that’s where it is: the fixtures everyone fills in without thinking.
Reputation lags reality by about a month. Cruz Azul are the reigning champions and sit 12th. Three straight defeats is not a blip any more, but the badge keeps getting picked because a pool is filled in quickly and from memory. A pool doesn’t reward knowing who is bigger. It rewards watching this season.
Frequently asked questions
Did Hull City really beat Manchester United? Yes. Hull won 2-0 at home on the opening weekend of the 2026-27 Premier League season, through Semi Ajayi and Nobel Mendy, in their first top-flight campaign in nine years.
How many upsets were there on August 22, 2026? Seven across five leagues: two in Liga MX, three in the Premier League, one in LaLiga and one in Serie A.
Does one big weekend of upsets change how I should pick? Not in the direction most people assume. Inter, Bayern and Real Madrid all won the same day. The takeaway is to look harder at the fixtures your whole group fills in identically, not to start picking against every favourite.
How do you score a pool when results are this wild? However you set it up — the point is that scoring is automatic. In Quini every result is pulled from official data as matches finish, so nobody in the group has to arbitrate a weekend like this one.
Run yours where the maths does itself
A Saturday like August 22 is the whole argument for keeping a pool going week to week rather than only for the big tournaments. The rounds that decide a season are the ones nobody circles in advance.
Get Quini at playquini.com, set your group up, and let the scoring take care of itself. If you’re still working out which leagues to run, the 2026-27 season kickoff calendar has every start date, and we’ve compared the main prediction pool apps for friends if you want to see how they differ.