Arsenal and West Ham favourites make World Cup qualifying team of the round

With the international break done and dusted, now is the perfect time to reflect on the first stage of qualification for the 2022 World Cup in Europe.

Here we reveal the best WhoScored rated XI from qualification thus far, only considering those to have played in all three matches.

Countries like Denmark and Belgium excelled over the last two weeks but each fielded a second string team in one game, therefore explaining their absence from our XI.

It may come as a surprise but the Netherlands are actually the best represented nation in our XI, with four players making the cut. Frank de Boer certainly needs more than a 7-0 win over Gibraltar to convince he is the coach to lead them forward, but that sort of scoreline certainly helps in terms of player ratings from such a small pool of games.

Memphis Depay certainly enjoyed himself against lesser opposition to finish the break as the top rated player in qualification. His rating would have been even better had he not missed a penalty against Turkey in their opening game. Nonetheless, Depay still scored or assisted in all three matches and played a direct hand in four goals in total, closing off the break with successive WhoScored Man of the Match awards.

Kickstarting off the team in general is San Marino's Elia Benedettini. San Marino lost all three group games and conceded 10 goals in the process but it would have been a lot worse had it not been for Benedettini in goal. The 25-year-old made some genuine high class saves in defeat to England and was obviously called into action a lot in subsequent games with Hungary and Albania. In fact, no goalkeeper has made more saves in qualifying than Benedettini (19).

Stepping forward into defence and Arsenal fans will no doubt be delighted to see Kieran Tierney. The 23-year-old rounded off the break with a hat-trick of assists in Scotland's 4-0 win over the Faroe Islands, as many as he has managed in his entire Premier League career.

There is more Premier League representation in the side with West Ham's Tomas Soucek in midfield and Fulham's Aleksandar Mitrovic up front. The former kickstarted qualification with a perfect hat-trick and 10 rating in Czech Republic's 6-2 win over Estonia, while Mitrovic scored five goals in three games at a rate of every 40.2 minutes. Mitrovic has seven goals in seven caps for Serbia this season compared to just three goals in 24 games for Fulham.