Latest Sports Stories

Football News

The World Cup final is a classic clash of the process team against a side riding an emotional urge to fulfil Messi’s destinyIn the 37 minutes between England going ahead against Argentina and falling behind, they had 12% possession. It’s fair to assume that in the World Cup final Spain will provide a rather different challenge. They do not suffer the Mafeking tendency of the English, seeking to re-enact some famous siege every time they take the lead. The finalists have averaged 64% possession so far in the tournament. Spain could hardly be more different to England: their way is not of panic but of process.There is a clearly defined Spanish style, as there has been since Vicente del Bosque replaced Luis Aragonés as Spain manager in 2008, and arguably before. In that, perhaps, there is hope for England. Spain once were even greater underachievers but Aragonés inspired the revolution against the furia roja orthodoxy. The result has been three Euros and a World Cup in the past two decades, with perhaps another to come on Sunday.The patience and emphasis on ball retention can at times become predictable – no system or style is ever without flaw – but Luis de la Fuente has reinvigorated the juego de posición model. A view of the alternative in Atlanta on Wednesday, a team pathologically unable even to attempt to retain possession, is instructive of how valuable can be the capacity not to lose the ball.It helps perhaps that De la Fuente is of the system. He is not a club coach dabbling in the international game, but a federation man who has known many of his players since they were in the national youth teams. This has been a bad tournament for big names signed up by wealthy nations – not just Thomas Tuchel, but Carlo Ancelotti, Julian Nagelsmann and Mauricio Pochettino. It’s no coincidence that Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni, like De la Fuente, also took the senior job after being under- 21 coach. He knows the players, knows the style, knows the system, knows the mentality.Joachim Löw, similarly, led Germany to the 2014 World Cup after coming through the federation. England’s improvement in international form – four semi-finals in five tournaments since 2018, after four in total before then – came after a revolution guided by Sir Gareth Southgate, who had worked with the FA in overhauling the academy system and the England DNA project before becoming under-21 coach.It increasingly feels that international football, at the highest level, is about systems (which may be an argument for Lee Carsley, who has led England Under-21s to two European Championship successes, to have been given the senior job).Under Scaloni, there has been a self-conscious effort to restore a more traditional Argentinian game, based less on physicality (in the sense of longer passes, bigger forwards, more running; obviously this side is quite prepared to be physical when it comes to regaining possession, as best embodied by Giuliano Simeone trying to wrestle Marc Guéhi off the ball with his head) and more on short passing.That’s why their analyst Matías Manna cites the Boca Juniors midfielder Leandro Paredes as the key presence in this side. “He wins the ball a lot from the front and knows how to defend behind him,” he has said.“If a team is built around passing, it’s important to have a holder like Paredes who interacts well with the inside players and the No 10. He’s the Argentinian who best finds Messi between the lines. You can’t analyse the game individually. The game is in the relationships between players.”Manna is obsessed by the idea that everything should be integrated, that the formation is less important than the tactical and emotional bonds between players. Under Scaloni, Argentina’s greatest strength is their togetherness, the sense of common purpose, the need to endow Lionel Messi with a second World Cup to invert the old argument and give him one more star than Diego Maradona.Where Spain have abandoned the notion of la furia, Argentina have embraced it. It’s obviously not as simple as just staying in the game until Messi can do something brilliant, but equally his capacity to turn matches through ability and force of will is in an enormous asset. The Messi-inspired late surge has been the defining feature of Argentina in the knockout stage.It seems likely that Argentina will do what they did against England and set up not in the 4-4-2 of earlier in the tournament but in a 4-5-1 with Messi as a loose centre-forward and Julián Alvárez on the left. Whether Simeone is used again as an irritant on the right – his clash with Marc Cucurella could be spectacularly antagonistic – or whether Rodrigo De Paul, Messi’s more familiar bodyguard, is deployed is perhaps the biggest decision Argentina have to make.The key, though, will be to try to unsettle the Spain midfield, to prevent them settling into their rhythm, which may mean Alexis Mac Allister or Enzo Fernández effectively performing a man-to-man job on Rodri, the metronome in the Spain midfield.Cape Verde and Egypt had both exposed Argentina’s vulnerability to pace. England, bafflingly, did not try to exploit it and it’s not something that Spain can obviously do. Their great asset at the last Euros was combining suffocating possession with directness they had in wide forward areas. But injury has restricted them in this tournament.On the left Nico Williams, who was such a force at the Euros, has been restricted to substitute appearances and Álex Baena looks exactly what he is: a central creator without great natural pace filling in on the flank. On the right Lamine Yamal, who came into the tournament carrying a hamstring problem, has been looking fitter game by game, but has not yet been at his very best.There is a sense in which the final is a classic clash of the process team with a side riding an emotional wave. Passion always brings with it a risk: it could boil over to hand the cool rationalists an easy win. Should Spain take the lead, it’s easy to imagine them frustrating Argentina, denying them the ball and picking them off on the counter.But Argentina are a more self-aware side than, say, Brazil in 2014, better able to direct their drive and the longer the game goes on without a goal, the likelier Argentina fulfilling Messi’s manifest destiny becomes.

Football News

“A lot of our community has been pushed out by the World Cup. We’re not just dollar signs, we’re more than that. We’re people and we’re frustrated that they’ve chosen to treat us less than human.”“They dropped me off there in the middle of the night. They call them Mormon centres or whatever, but it ain’t nothing but a warehouse of cops. It looked like a Fema camp. When I saw it, I left, I walked all the way back here. It’s because of the World Cup. They’re trying to make it look good for tourists. They don’t want the eyesores around.”One week before the World Cup final Gianni Infantino flew from Miami to Qatar on a luxury private jet. Infantino was in Lusail to attend the funeral of the former Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin ⁠Khalifa Al Thani (“mentor, a visionary”) and was duly pictured frowning on a silver throne in full global statesman mode.That same Sunday, Donald Trump made an official trip to his own golf complex in Virginia, home to a 50,000 sq ft clubhouse, Olympic-sized swimming pool and unobstructed views of the Potomac River, thanks to a renovation that involved chopping down 465 trees.Also on the same day, the Guardian published a story about the homeless clearance at Freedom Park, less than a mile from one of Atlanta’s World Cup fan-watch areas. City employees had entered the park without warning and removed the tents, personal ID, medication and other belongings of people camping there.A city official said Freedom Park was not an official encampment so rules over process were not applied. The sweep was described as “routine park maintenance”. A day before England’s semi-final against Argentina, the last of Atlanta’s eight World Cup matches, Freedom Park was almost entirely empty, a rolling green space surrounded by handsome suburban houses, with no mark of the tents and bags and chairs removed by the city.The clearance of homeless people from host city centres has been a feature of the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico. Andre Dickens, the mayor of Atlanta, has been clear about why this is happening. “We want to make sure those unsheltered individuals don’t come anywhere near downtown and throughout the city of Atlanta, not just during the World Cup but now,” he said last year.This is also Trump administration policy. “You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family,” the vice-president, JD Vance, told an event in Peachtree City last August, using language that was criticised for its hostility.Atlanta launched a World Cup-centred plan called Downtown Rising, designed to remove homeless camps in the city centre before the tournament. The campaign has funding, a laudable set of aims, and claims to have housed 500 people.Freedom Park suggests the city has also been heavy-handed in its actions at times, tragically so in one case. In January last year, Cornelius Taylor was sleeping in his tent on Old Wheat Street, in the historic black neighbourhood of Sweet Auburn, when council workers arrived to conduct a clearance of the street. Taylor was crushed to death in the street by a five-tonne bulldozer as he slept. His fiance would later describe finding blood and body parts inside his possessions. His death led to promises for greater care and the introduction of new protocols in the city, which is home to an estimated 3,000 unhoused people.There is still uncertainty over how this has worked in practice. At the Centre for Health and Rehabilitation in Fulton County, just across from the Freedom Park trail, workers treat homeless people with mental health and addiction problems. One care worker said she had noticed a drop in numbers of people on the streets during the World Cup and had read stories of the homeless being housed for the duration, but had no clear idea where they had been taken or whether there had been any choice in their relocation.“I haven’t seen evidence of what has occurred, but we do know the people are gone. So where did they go? A lot of those people definitely wanted to be where they were within that vicinity. And I don’t know where they were taken. So they could have been displaced well away.”There is no official rehousing centre during the World Cup in Atlanta. One homeless man, Sirius, a visitor to the Crossroads Community Center close to Atlanta’s Fifa hotels and a 20-minute walk from the stadium, described being taken to a centre beyond the city’s West End.“They dropped me off there in the middle of the night. They call them Mormon centres or whatever, but it ain’t nothing but a warehouse of cops. It looked like a Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camp. When I saw it, I left. I walked all the way back here. It’s because of the World Cup. They’re trying to make it look good for tourists.“They used to just drop you off in the middle of the street over there by Pryor Road, across from Gateway. Now they take you all the way up to Metropolitan on the far outskirts.”Another homeless man, Drayvon Clark, expressed concerns at the way the World Cup has affected the city. “We feel like a lot of our community has been pushed out. We’re not just dollar signs, we’re more than that. We’re people and we’re frustrated with the fact that they’ve chosen to treat us less than human in a lot of the areas because of making money.“Not saying that we don’t love soccer, we do love soccer, but it is traumatic. They went and got third-party park rangers, other organisations to try to push out people, our people. It doesn’t matter, black, white, even homeless. And we just want to get our voice heard.”Homelessness is a profound social problem in the US. There are at least 770,000 unhoused people nationwide, according to official figures. This has been addressed by the passing of hundreds of new bills criminalising sleeping outside or lingering in public spaces in the past two years. The World Cup has supercharged that process in its host cities.This has often been an issue around big sporting events. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the city kept around 9,000 people in a de facto detention centre. Paris bussed its homeless out of the centre during the 2024 Olympics. Leading into this World Cup there have been various host city programmes, some of which seem genuinely geared towards addressing the problem by providing new housing.In Los Angeles, homeless people have been put up in block-booked motels. In Dallas, an encampment of up to 200 tents close to the city hall has been cleared. Seattle’s recently elected mayor, Katie Wilson, made a pledge to build 500 new homes to help clear city centre homeless camps by the start of the World Cup. The actual number by that date was 50.Despite these efforts, the presence of homeless people in host cities has been a constant reminder of how brutal this country can be, of the gap between rich and poor, and of how easy it is to fall between the cracks.On the eve of the final there was even a homeless camp at the entrance to the bizarrely hyper-publicised Fanatics event in Manhattan. At moments like this America itself can feel like an act of violence, a place where the idea of a safety net or a support system is stretched to its finest point.“This country is bred that way,” Sirius says. “We’re a war country. That’s what we do. All the people here are indoctrinated from their youth to be very aggressive, to be numb to it. It’s intentional. America is hard. Actual rights have been turned to paying privileges.“I’m going to be honest. Black people in Atlanta don’t play football. So when you invited the world here, you invited the world to participate in a sport that these people are not even included in.“The thing about this sport is it makes so much money, but we don’t. Are we going to unite the world? Are we going to fix the city? Until they level the playing ground and we can produce more soccer moms in my community, it’s going to be that way. It has nothing to do with us. We’re the only people that’s excluded from it.”These problems look ever more jarring in the context of Fifa’s endless sloganeering about how football brings the world together. In reality the World Cup is a brutally administered entertainment leisure complex, and something that sounds in this context very much like an act of sportswashing.“They always bring a big event that everybody’s blinded by,” Sirius adds. “You’ve seen Gladiator, it’s like the Games. That’s what it’s for. It’s a distraction. They treat us like trash and trampled over us. But that’s America for you, isn’t it? They’ve got to reckon with heaven and hell at the end of it. God bless America.”

Football News

A history of racism and ongoing footballing rivalries have made the choice of which team to get behind in Sunday’s final a charged topicThe Brazilian journalist and columnist Julia Duailibi usually writes about politics in her weekly column for the leading Brazilian newspaper O Globo, but last Thursday she took a different tack, writing instead about why she would not be supporting neighbouring Argentina in the World Cup final.“I have always been an admirer of the hermanos [as Brazilians affectionately call Argentinians] and would have loved to cheer on a fellow South American team,” she wrote on the morning after Argentina’s dramatic semi-final victory over England. “But I admit that the racist scenes involving a minority of the fans, and the silence of the majority on the pitch, turned my stomach.”Her stand is just one example of a common sentiment: across Latin America, many people have declared their support for Spain in Sunday’s final. Racism by some Argentinian fans has been cited as one reason, but not the only one.“In the past, people were more likely to support a Latin American team against a European one, but that has changed quite a lot in recent years,” said Nicolás Cabrera, an Argentinian sociologist and anthropologist who has devoted his academic career to studying football supporters across Latin America.Previously, he said, that approach had largely been confined to Argentina’s traditional local rivals – above all Brazil, but also Uruguay and Chile – but has more recently extended to some Mexicans, Colombians and Ecuadorians.“Rifts began to appear for several reasons,” said Cabrera, who has lived in Rio de Janeiro for the past 10 years, where he is a university lecturer and researcher.First, there is the fact that Argentina have by far been Latin America’s most successful national team in recent years, reaching three of the past four World Cup finals and winning at least one of them.Over the same period, their neighbours have suffered much earlier exits This includes Brazil, who have not reached the World Cup final since winning their record fifth title in 2002.Argentina also have the star who has been lifting trophies and winning hearts around the world for two decades: Lionel Messi, who, even at 39, has been one of this World Cup’s standout players.Cabrera also sees the growing rivalry as a consequence of the increasing number of matches between clubs – the Copa Libertadores continental tournament featured about 20 teams until the 1990s; today, including the preliminary rounds, nearly 50 compete. “As our teams play each other more often, fans start winding each other up,” he said.But Cabrera added that social media have also contributed: “Hate speech, racism, xenophobia and discrimination began to circulate in ways that had previously been more marginal and less visible.”It is difficult for there to be a match between clubs from Argentina and Brazil without at least one video emerging of an Argentina supporter making monkey gestures at Brazilians. But this is far from new: in 1920, on the eve of a friendly between the two sides, an Argentinian newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Brazilian players as monkeys.In recent months, several tourists from Argentina have been arrested in Brazil for “racial insult”, a crime under Brazilian law. While celebrating his country’s victory over England, an Argentinian tourist was filmed in the Brazilian north-eastern state of Bahia making monkey gestures at a Black Brazilian. He was not arrested and has reportedly already returned to Argentina.What had previously been confined to the streets and the stands at Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana matches spilled over into the World Cup – including the incidents involving US influencer IShowSpeed in Argentina’s game against Cape Verde. That was what prompted Duailibi to take a break from politics to write about Argentina.“I know Brazil is not a model in this respect either, that we still have a long way to go when it comes to racism, but at least our legal framework is far more effective than theirs,” she said. Argentina has no law that explicitly criminalises racism.The controversies are not confined to Brazil or the terraces. While celebrating their 2024 Copa América title, Argentina players chanted racist and homophobic songs about members of the France squad they had defeated in the 2022 World Cup final. During the current World Cup, a well-known Argentinian journalist said on a television programme that he hated Mexicans “with all his soul”. Days earlier, he had also claimed that, during a match between Mexico and Ecuador, the Ecuadorians played in fear after supposedly being “threatened with death” by a Mexican drug cartel. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, described the remarks as “outrageous”.While condemning the racist incidents involving some Argentinians, Fábio Luís Barbosa dos Santos, a Brazilian historian specialising in Latin America, said that they will not stop him from supporting the neighbouring country in the final.“If the issue is racism, then you couldn’t support Spain either,” he said, recalling not only Spain’s colonial past, during which it profited from the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, but also the countless recent cases of racist abuse directed at the Brazilian footballer Vinícius Júnior by La Liga supporters in his appearances for Real Madrid.Santos said he would be supporting Argentina “because we are countries bound together by our colonial past, by dictatorships and now by the far right”, noting that while Argentina has President Javier Milei, Brazil until recently had Jair Bolsonaro in the equivalent position. “Their misfortunes are ours too, as their joys should be,” he added.He is far from the only Brazilian supporting Argentina in the final.The ride-hailing driver João Felipe Jr, 32, will travel 270 miles from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo to watch the match at a bar founded by Argentinians that went viral for welcoming dozens of Brazilians who have also chosen to support the neighbouring country.“There was a Brazil v Argentina match at the Maracanã three years ago that I attended with the Argentina supporters,” said Felipe Jr, who dismissed as “nonsense” the flood of memes and conspiracy theories on social media claiming that Argentina had been favoured by Fifa.“They deserve to be in the final, above all because of what Messi is doing. For me, it has everything to do with him. When he retires, I’ll stop supporting Argentina,” he said.

Football News

Saturday’s rebranded “bronze final” between France and England in Miami might feel like a modern, Gianni-coded exercise in squeezing the product dry, but the third-place playoff is a staple of World Cup history, even if it remains the game nobody wants to play in. The very first TPPO came in 1934, Germany defeating Austria 3-2 in a match engulfed in murky, menacing geopolitics. Thankfully, the fixture quickly became a more knockabout affair – Brazil swaggered on to the world stage by beating Sweden 4-2 in 1938, and France put six past West Germany in a nine-goal feast of football 20 years later. Just Fontaine scored four that day, later to be joined by Thomas Müller, Davor Suker and Toto Schillaci in using the fixture to pad their Golden Boot stats – a tactic Kylian Mbappé might want to try against a punch-drunk England side and pip Lionel Messi to another personal accolade as a result.Yes, the third-place playoff can have a hungover, world-weary vibe, but it can also be a lot of fun. The goals-per-game average is higher than in the final, and the TPPO has never gone to penalties. But does the result matter? It depends who you ask. Back in 1982, France lost an all-time classic semi-final on penalties to West Germany, and were extremely laissez-faire against Poland just two days later. “Our hearts were elsewhere,” Alain Giresse recalled 40 years on. “We had pulled the plug.” On the other hand, Poland’s 3-2 victory meant they matched their best-ever performance, having also won the TPPO against Brazil in 1970. Plenty of other teams have secured a new personal best via this fixture, including Austria, Chile, Portugal, Turkey and Belgium, whose 2-0 triumph over a checked-out England sealed third place in 2018, and a rousing civic reception when the squad returned home.Even if no player or team truly enjoys this game, England still like it less than most. Their two previous appearances have ended in defeat – against Italy in 1990, and the aforementioned Belgium clash in 2018. Not even Carlo Ancelotti would raise an eyebrow if England come up short again on Saturday, against an all-star France attack eager to take out their frustration on anyone in their path. But if England can be a little more Azteca, a little less Atlanta, then their best men’s World Cup performance since 1966 is in reach. So dig Kobbie Mainoo out of storage, fire up Wonderwall and get in the mood. What do you reckon, Thomas Tuchel? “None of our players and none of the French players want to play this match.” Ah. Still, would victory at least earn Tuchel some breathing room, a shiny bronze medal to point at as hacks keep banging on about the Argentina game? The short, and indeed long answer is no. But there are just two bites left at this summer-long buffet of football, so we’re going to watch it anyway.Join John Brewin from 10pm BST (5pm EST) for hot minute-by-minute updates from France 3-1 England in the TPPO.Want a pick of Big Website’s best sportswriting and highlights in the past seven days? Well, subscribe to the Recap and you’ll get it on Sunday.“None of us ‌wanted to play for ​this third place but ​we have no choice. We want to pay back our coach. He did so much for the France team. We must be grateful to him for that and we need to do everything we can to win this game … to get this chocolate medal, this bronze medal” – Ibrahima Konaté has got Football Daily hungry before Didier Deschamps’ final game with France.double quotation markI seem to recall that the GWC has been hosted by three countries, who advanced to the same stage of the competition, making them at least equal as far as ability to compete is concerned. So, surely, any presentations at the final should be represented and handed over by Canada, Mexico and USA USA USA, on behalf of Fifa, and not only by Donald Trump?” – Dave Butler.double quotation markSo Donald Trump will be attending the GWC final … what further imaginary award will Infantino pull out of the hat for him at the end? The Ballon d’Orange perhaps?” – Phil Tavernerdouble quotation markRe: naming the 2030 World Cup (Football Daily letters passim): split across three global power zones, it sounds like an Aldous Huxley dystopian vision. How about Brave New World Cup?” – Daniel SolomonsIf you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day goes to … Dave Butler. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Football News

Pundits set out on the New York river to fulfil forfeit after Wayne’s errant prediction about Norway at the World CupThe BBC punditry trio Wayne Rooney, Micah Richards and Joe Hart are fresh off a boat on New York’s Hudson River after an attempt to honour Rooney’s declaration that he would “row the River Mersey” if Norway reached the World Cup quarter-final. They did, prompting Erling Haaland to tease Rooney, saying: “I’m looking forward to seeing you, Wayney boy.”Wayne Rooney: “It was more relaxing than I thought. Once we got into a nice little rhythm, we were OK. A couple of other times we came out of the rhythm and Micah nearly killed my back. But no, it was good. Harty looks like he’s been doing it for years. So it was actually enjoyable.”Micah Richards: “It was good fun. I wouldn’t pick it to do it again, but I enjoyed it – there for the lads.”Joe Hart: “It sums up how we’ve been the whole World Cup, as a trio. None of us were so comfy doing it but no one cared, we all got on with it and it was a good laugh. And Wazza said he was going to do it and he has done it, so he’s a man of his word.”Their first time working together at the World Cup was England’s second group game, the goalless draw with Ghana on 23 June, but it revealed an instant chemistry between the three.JH: “It’s gone well because, while we’re all very professional in what we’re doing, we also go way back – like a long way back – and that’s important. It means that we’re ourselves and feel comfortable around each other. Gabby [Logan], Kelly [Cates] and Chappers [Mark Chapman] have been unreal as presenters in getting the best out of us. As a group we’ve really found something.”WR: “It’s strange in a way, but it’s very similar to when you’re playing on the pitch. We all have our bits of analysis to do but in terms of when we’re talking, you don’t want to speak over someone else, so it’s about eye contact and understanding when you’re coming in next. It’s really good chemistry.”MR: “Harty – for me, it would have been when you arrived [at Manchester City] from Shrewsbury [in 2006], wouldn’t it?”JH: “I met Micah when I was 19, he was 18 – so over 20 years ago. And then obviously Wayne was in the England team from when he was like 12 [laughs].”WR: “I met you, Micah, the first time you were in the England squad [November 2006] and I remember thinking: ‘Who’s this loud lad coming in?’ So we’ve played with and against each other, we enjoy each other’s company and we’ve all had different careers in different ways and are very respectful of what we’ve achieved and, most importantly, now what we’re doing.“We’re respectful of each other’s opinions. And what helps, too, is that before the show there’s a lot of preparation – we try to talk and help each other out alongside the producers, who do it so well.”How easy is it to be as honest as you all are when offering opinions?JH: “I find it easy because no one’s right. You may say your opinion isn’t as valid as mine because you haven’t played the game. But I don’t think it matters – as long as you’re being fair, then fine. I’ll die on my sword for this but I’ll always represent the players because I feel like you can’t forget what it’s like to be out there. That’s not giving them excuses, but explaining why certain things happen because, especially at the World Cup, the level is unbelievable. So it’d be lazy to say someone’s not a good player. But there’s reasons why they may have difficult games and usually it’s down to the opposition or circumstances. So it’s just about trying to paint that picture as best you can from a professional point of view.”MR: “From my point of view, Joe and Wayne deserve huge credit for the way they’ve applied themselves and performed because with the BBC, there have been as many as 24 million viewers. This is your first tournament Wayne, I believe?WR: “Well, I’ve done a couple of games before.”MR: “Your first when you’re doing it properly, then, and you’re on every single time. And Joe as well – you did a little bit of the last Euros, didn’t you?”MR: “So for them to be in the studio and perform the way they are, I think it’s sensational. It’s very hard, especially when you’re in Salford and we all see ITV’s fancy studio [in New York] – we have to work a little bit harder to keep the audience engaged.”WR: “Just on that – ITV [their experts] haven’t been to a game, have they? We’ve been here for three days and already been to more than them [England’s semi-final]!”MR: “Our chemistry – we’ve just come out of the dressing room, haven’t we? We’ve still got that banter and we want to be relatable on air. We know broadcasting can be difficult at times but going back to your question about honesty: we’re just honest, you know, the same on air as off.”WR: “There’s a good blend between us. Joe’s completely right about defending the players as well. There’s times where we’ve all been criticised when we were players and it’s not nice. But from my point of view I don’t mind criticising but as long as it’s constructive and it’s in the right way. Like when I’ve said a player has not had a good game: I’ll say that if I feel the player will know he has not had a good game.“Like after the last game [England’s 2-1 defeat by Argentina] – I felt it was a mistake by Thomas Tuchel to go defensive. It’s important to say that because if you are sitting at home and you say the players were brilliant when they were not or Tuchel was brilliant when he wasn’t, then you know you’re not going to listen to what we say.”You were certainly relatable after Harry Kane’s voice went squeaky following England’s 3-2 last-16 win over MexicoJH: “I had to strap in because they’d fully gone and I thought: ‘They’re going to come back to us here.’ So I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d like to have.”WR: “I was looking for Kermit the Frog! No, I thought it was brilliant. Kelly [Somers] was interviewing him and Harry could have stopped the interview a bit earlier but fair play, he didn’t – it was so funny.”JH: “That night was special. The fact there was an hour delay [because of the weather] and we ended up kicking off at 2am UK time and that could have been a difficult slog, couldn’t it?”WR: “But even that – we planned for a delay as well, actually planned for more than two hours.”Your sense of humour, Wayne, was also evident in you taking Haaland’s “Wayney boy” in good spiritWR: “We had good fun doing it and we just sent a message to Haaland, saying ‘Enjoy your time in Marbella’ and obviously, too, that we hope he enjoys the boat. I said I’d do it and straight away I was thinking, ‘I’m in trouble here’ but Micah and Harty helped me out. We just enjoy each other’s company. We’re going to play padel now together and so it’s important that the people you work with you like.”England play France in Saturday’s bronze-medal game. How hard would it be to stay motivated for a game like that?JH: “If I was going for a Golden Boot like Harry then I’d definitely [be motivated]. You’ve got to create a narrative. It’s obviously easy for us to joke and say it’s a pointless game, but if you’re in that England camp and representing your country on the biggest stage, then do it. That’s where Tuchel has still got to be a top manager, a top motivator.”MR: “Yes – though I would have liked to see him go for it more against Argentina.”JH: “I’m going to reserve my opinion – I want to hear his verdict. We were there that night and it got really wild. England were toe-to-toe with the best team in the world with the medals to prove it and the best player to ever play the game [Lionel Messi]. Then I felt like it was drifting away - Tuchel may have got caught up in the moment as a human and just thought: ‘Revert to type to what got us through [against Mexico].’ I think that’s something he’ll reflect on.”WR: “It was there for us to win with 15, 20 minutes to go, whatever it was. He made a big mistake in not allowing us the opportunity to get more pressure on the ball and surrender possession. But if Tuchel gets sacked who are we going to bring in? You could get Pep [Guardiola] but is that going to work? Tuchel will learn from his mistakes so I would keep him.”MR: “I agree with Wayne in terms of the manager and the negative moves he made on the day [but] Argentina were the better team. The players showed pride but I watched that second half again and they absolutely battered us.”Rooney, Hart and Richards will cover the World Cup final live on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday.

Football News

Brash midfielder has admirers in Madrid, though his World Cup displays illustrate what he can offer Xabi Alonso’s BluesEnzo Fernández was an unstoppable mix of style and spite during Argentina’s win over England. The midfielder’s first contribution during Wednesday’s semi-final in Atlanta was to plough into Elliot Anderson and clobber Manchester City’s new £116m signing round the head. He escaped without a booking, though, and made the most of some generous refereeing by showing the other side to his game when Argentina took control after going 1-0 down early in the second half.Much has already been said about England’s attempt to hold on to their lead. A particular frustration for fans who watch the Premier League every week was that not enough was done to disrupt Fernández. The Chelsea midfielder is a wonderful player in possession but can struggle when opponents run past him. That weakness has caused structural issues for Chelsea and will be a factor if they decide to sell the Argentinian this summer. Against England, though, Fernández was given space to do as he pleased during the second half. He pulled the strings next to Alexis Mac Allister and proved his big-game mentality by scoring the equaliser with a bending shot from 25 yards in the 85th minute.Fernández had clearly spotted a weakness in the England goal. He shot four times from long range and his final effort caught Jordan Pickford out. England never reacted to the danger. They stopped making Fernández look the other way. The statistics show Fernández won only three of his nine ground duels during the game. On the other hand he had more touches than anyone else on the pitch (104) and had a 98% pass completion rate.Fernández enjoyed it. On his Instagram stories he posted a picture of himself laughing with Lionel Messi and Leandro Paredes at Argentina’s training ground and used Wonderwall as the soundtrack. It will probably not endear Fernández to English crowds but he is unlikely to care. In case you haven’t noticed, he is pretty intrigued by the idea of living in Spain. There was a clash with Chelsea at the end of last season, resulting in the club banning Fernández for two games, and it will be interesting to see if the 25-year-old has done enough at the World Cup to convince Real Madrid to push for his signature.From a scouting perspective, Fernández could not have picked a better country to play against in Sunday’s final. Madrid, who have already signed Marc Cucurella from Chelsea this summer, will surely take note if Fernández stars against Spain. José Mourinho needs additions in midfield, which is where Madrid have suffered most in recent years. Luka Modric and Toni Kroos exiting left a creative vacuum and, although Madrid took the surprising step of issuing a public denial of any interest in Fernández this month, there are suggestions that they remain interested in signing the Argentinian.Chelsea’s asking price of £120m is too high. There is also an argument that Fernández’s displays on the international stage should make Chelsea think twice about agreeing to a sale if Madrid come calling. Xabi Alonso, the latest manager looking to usher in a sense of order at Stamford Bridge, needs fighters. Fernández has not always covered himself in glory but it is worth noting that he has experienced chaos with his club and stability with his country. He looks more at ease in an Argentina shirt. He has emerged as a leader for his national side and could be the same for Alonso at Chelsea.Fernández is a clutch player. He has become an expert box crasher for Chelsea and scored 12 goals last season. Fernández times his runs expertly and finishes well. He even offers a threat in the air, as Egypt discovered when he knocked them out in the last 16 with a beautiful header in added time.That was one of many examples of the former Benfica midfielder producing for Argentina in crucial moments. It was similar when they won the 2022 World Cup, although the difference then was that Fernández was not in the team at the start of the tournament. He was 21 and waited for Lionel Scaloni to give him a chance. It arrived with Argentina needing a win against Mexico in their second game. Fernández was sent on with the deadlock yet to be broken in the 57th minute. Messi scored seven minutes later and Fernández made it 2-0 with a lovely strike in the 87th minute.There was no looking back. Fernández became a fixture in midfield and was named young player of the tournament. He was catapulted into stardom and joined Chelsea for £106.7m a month after the World Cup final. It was not always easy. Fernández was rightly pilloried for being filmed taking part in a racist chant about the France team after Argentina’s triumph in the Copa América in 2024. Fences had to be mended with his Chelsea teammates that summer. Fernández apologised for the incident in an interview last year.Will it all be enough to earn Fernández a spot in the same Bernabéu dressing room as Kylian Mbappé? How he fares against the great Spanish midfield could have an impact. Fernández has worked towards this moment. He has honed his physique during his time in England. He is the Argentina player with the most sprints and high-speed running. Rodri, Dani Olmo and Fabián Ruiz will pose a tougher test than Anderson and Declan Rice, though. Fernández’s level will have to rise again if he is to become a world champion again.

Football News

The Arsenal midfielder talks about how Luis de la Fuente has created a team built on respect and how they plan to beat Argentina in the World Cup finalThe night before the biggest day of their lives, the Spain players who were about to win the 2010 World Cup gathered in the Da Vinci Hotel in Sandton, just north of Johannesburg, drank hot chocolate, ate chocolate croissants and talked. The night before the biggest day of their lives, the Spain players seeking to emulate them 16 years later will gather in the MC Montclair in New Jersey and talk too, but there won’t be any chocolate this time. Some rituals are not to be repeated.“I think the nutritionists killed that one for us!” Mikel Merino says, hopping off the bus, freshly tuned up for the final, and heading into a tactics room at the Melanie Lane training ground, where Spain’s penultimate day of preparation is about to begin. “We used to do the Cola Cao and cakes in the under-19s and under-21s, copying the seniors, but not any more. Everyone has their own routine, but the main thing is to normalise it all: just another game, doing something we know how to do, that we’ve done since we were five years old and that we love. Treat it like something to be enjoyed, another day in our lives.”Some day. Some year too. “Spectacular,” Merino calls it. “Just the other day we were talking about this; if you had given me the chance, I would have signed up for this: going through the bad moments to have a year like this is incredible. The experiences I’ve been through, that my family have.” A Premier League title, a Champions League final, the birth of his first child and a World Cup final. And the injury that threatened it all. “I’m living every minute with an incredible joy,” he says. “Think where I was a few months ago and look where I am now. I appreciate this all the more.”The Spain coach, Luis de la Fuente, told Merino he would wait but the stress fracture in his foot defied easy analysis at first. “When they told me about my injury I didn’t think I would be at the World Cup,” the 30-year-old admits. Merino was operated on at the end of January, which actually came as relief because it meant that at least there was clarity, at least they were doing something. He spent two months on crutches. And then he went to work: hard.There were days he spent alone, others where he had help from his wife, lifting and carrying, which he said was the wrong way round: she was pregnant, but showed a strength without which he wouldn’t have made it. He learned that he was strong too, stronger than even he had imagined. But still, he played just 28 minutes between January and the World Cup, flying off and leaving his newly born son, Marco, behind. “Just being here is a victory for me,” he says. “God willing we can win it.”That Spain still can, that they made it this far, owes much to him, more super than a supersub. Like Lautaro Martínez, on the opposite side in the final, Merino has been a saviour from the bench. “Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine this,” he says, and yet he sort of did: this is what he prepares for, what he does. He doesn’t just sit there and he certainly doesn’t sulk; he studies.At Euro 2024, on as a substitute against Germany in Stuttgart, Merino scored the 119th-minute goal that took Spain into the semi-finals. Here, he scored the 91st-minute goal against Portugal that took Spain into the quarter-finals. There was only one problem: his wife and son weren’t there in Dallas. So four days later in Los Angeles, when they were, he went and did it again against Belgium. The clock had shown 85min 32sec when he came on; it said 87:27 when he scored the winner. He had just two touches: almost as significant as the strike itself was the alertness to set the ball rolling in the first place.All three goals were celebrated the same way, famous now. Merino circled the corner flag like his father, Ángel Miguel, had done when he scored late for Osasuna in the same Stuttgart stadium 33 years earlier. Win the World Cup and he can definitively say he was the better player, surely? “My mum won’t buy that one, not even with a World Cup,” he says, laughing. “I’m proud to follow in my dad’s footsteps, to have learnt all I’ve learnt from him, and the respect will always be there … even if I have the medal!“Coming from the bench isn’t the ideal plan for any player, but when you join a national team that’s as strong as I and Lautaro have, you value every opportunity and try to help your team if you come on or if you don’t. You focus on the present, embrace the situation, and think of yourself as the guy who can do it. I have complete belief in myself, my ability: every time I come on to the pitch I think I can have impact. In the final, I hope anyone [Spanish] is the hero. The trophy belongs to all of you, not just the 11 on the pitch.”He continues: “It’s important to have ego as a footballer. With all the criticism from outside, you need it. But you also need the humility. Players come to the national team because they’re important [at their clubs] and find a new reality. It is easy to talk about ‘family’ but when things don’t go well, when they’re difficult, is when you truly see that. It’s thanks to Luis and the squad he assembled, focused on being a good human first and then being a good footballer. That helps a lot when it comes to spending a lot of time together. We know each other very well, we know when to joke, when to be silent; that’s the strength of the group. That after 46, 47 days all together, we’re still …”There’s a pause and Merino laughs. Don’t get the wrong idea. “I wouldn’t say we were bursting to spend another two months together,” he says, cracking up. “Thank God, we’re coming to an end now, but, yes, we’re a very strong group. That’s why we’re here.” There may be no hot chocolate and no croissants any more but some meet round the PlayStation, others play Mario Kart or chess, Dani Olmo and Unai Simón battling on the bus to games. Merino is old school, more about the sobremesa: long conversations after eating, no hurry to leave the table, “chatting about life, our kids, the future, holidays”.“I think a couple they’re planning to go away together [after the World Cup],” he says. “Which is … impressive … after all this time. I don’t expect to see anyone!”That collectiveness has deep roots, built on respect and over a long time. After the semi-final, De la Fuente said there was a special embrace with some, a moment’s nostalgia allowed to creep in: look what we did. His first title was the European Under-19s in 2015, 11 years ago now. In the middle of the Spain midfield that day were Merino and Rodri. Simón was on the bench. Ten of the current squad have played under De la Fuente at junior level.“I was talking to the coach about that the other day because it was the anniversary of that tournament,” Merino says. “We were saying ‘how we’ve changed’ But the essence is the same: the essence of the coach, of the players that came through. That’s the strength of the group. There are more grey hairs, more wrinkles, more worries, but the humility and commitment remains.“Luis has had [many of] us at under-17, under-19, under-21. That’s so important. Not just for him, who knows each and every one of us and knows what we can give, which is a guarantee for a coach. But for the players too: you’ve experienced everything with him, good and bad, and you don’t have to give him anything new, you know? He knows what you can give: you don’t need to pull anything out of the hat. He takes you because he knows you as a person and a player. The group knows he has total faith in them and he knows the group will give our lives for him.”Which is why when Spain lost in Scotland at the start of De la Fuente’s tenure, which from the outside seemed destined to be brief, there was belief. Since then Spain have lost once in 37 games – and that was on penalties in the Nations League final. They have won a Nations League, a Euros and now they have a World Cup final too.“Often, it’s more a case of believing than something you actually see,” Merino says. “We have a very good group, a generation of players whose level is high. We knew there was potential there, we could see things happening. Even that night in Scotland, when many people gave us up for dead or thought it wasn’t going to go well with this generation, we trusted in what we were doing, we knew the group was spectacular. And, look, it’s paid off: we were proven right.”So to Spain versus Argentina. To Messi versus Lamine. And that photo. “It’s unbelievable,” Merino says. “The first time I saw it, I thought it was AI, that it wasn’t even real. It is funny how life works sometimes: it has these special situations that you think are scripted by someone but it is just the coincidence of life. It’s unbelievable that two of the best to have played the game – hopefully Lamine in the future will be one of those – share a picture like that. It’s old, from a couple of years ago now, so I think all the jokes have been done [in here]. But it’s incredible.“What can I say about Messi? Just see the way he’s playing, how good he is at 39. I don’t know if this will be his last game, his last final. But it’s an incredible challenge to play against him. It will be an intense game, which it has to be: it’s a World Cup final. There will be contact, intense duels, but that’s why you have a referee: to control that. We have to ensure the ball moves fast. The less time it spends with each of us, the less chance they have of making fouls.”And then play, like it was any other day, like Spain always did. “I remember how it felt to watch that [2010] generation make history,” Merino says. “You think about that. You think about being a kid back then, watching players who were idols for me and my teammates. You think about how you dreamed of living that one day, how watching them motivated you. And then you think that you’re the ones representing your country now, you’re the ones this new generation of kids are watching, and it’s something magical.”

Football News

England’s coach said ball possession is not in the team’s DNA – it’s an opinion that should disqualify him from the jobHow we talked. On late-night news shows, disembodied heads above a rolling yellow banner. On planes and trains, at bus stops and flower shops and kids’ birthday parties, trying desperately to connect the ennui of the now with the vividness of the later, trying on some level to anticipate the feelings, the blood surge, the heart rush. At the sinks in the office toilets, jerthinktheylldoit, theyactuallymighty’know, shake-shake, and your devastating analysis of the Rice-Anderson-Mainoo triple pivot gets lost in the noise of the hand-dryer.Two years of this. Countless millions sunk on tickets, hotels, Ubers, shirts, pizzas, flags, the hours spent on Google Maps trying to locate somewhere to eat after 11pm in Riga, the endless psychodrama over Jude Bellingham and whether he should have been left at home or not (turns out, not). How we bled and sweated over this, over the minor details of the journey, over whether Danny Welbeck had done enough to earn a place in the squad or not (turns out, not). All pointing towards the moment on Wednesday evening when England are 1-0 up in a World Cup semi-final against Argentina and your entire happiness rests on whether a bunch of millionaire footballers and a millionaire German coach can keep their shit together for 40 minutes, or not.Turns out, not. And out there, on the ragged shores of This England, there is a view already beginning to take shape. That while Thomas Tuchel’s substitutions may have cemented Argentina’s territorial dominance, England were basically under the pump long before that point, already dropping back and committing to a defensive rearguard. That this is in fact a wider malaise, perhaps even a kind of moral deficiency, a long and persistent pattern of failure in which – say – getting destroyed 4-1 by Germany in 2010 and losing to France in 2022 with 57% possession are basically the same offence, a common sickness, the same lozenge in different flavours.And you have to challenge these things at source, because if you don’t challenge them they become established fact, whether or not they’re actually true. Well, I’ve watched the tape back so you don’t have to. Specifically, the 13 minutes from Anthony Gordon’s goal hitting the net to the second drinks break. In those 13 minutes England have to weather quite a bit of Argentina pressure. There are corners, crosses, a header from Nicolás González that Jordan Pickford gets down well to save. But none of this is remotely out of the ordinary.Indeed pretty much as soon as Argentina kick off they gift England another opening, Lisandro Martínez letting the ball run under his foot, Morgan Rogers winning possession, and Harry Kane not quite able to control his pass. By 61 minutes England have pressed Argentina back into their own third. In the subsequent minutes Kane and Declan Rice will both have low-percentage shots from distance.The problem here is not tactics, not fatalism, not an endemic national culture of failure, but poor decision-making, perhaps reinforced by fatigue. Lionel Messi is not yet running the game, and none of what follows is inexorable or inevitable, let alone generational. The drinks break arrives and England can rest for a few minutes, perhaps even make a sub or two to freshen things up. It is at this point that Tuchel decides to blow up England’s chances of winning the World Cup.As a counterfactual, what would have a more optimistic and effective response looked like at this point? Kane was clearly out on his feet, and keeping him in play for the faint possibility of penalties in an hour was madness. So Ollie Watkins comes on to stretch the play and lead the press. This is no longer a game for Rogers and so you throw on Bukayo Saka, not just for his defensive skill but his ability to dribble his way out of pressure and feast on the spaces that will open up. Above all you trust in the process, the sense of purpose and ambition and unity that knows that World Cups are won, not survived.“If we lose, we lose in our way,” Tuchel told his players at half-time in the opening game against Croatia, a call to arms that generated some of the most thrilling football England have played at a major tournament in my lifetime. Where did that go, Thomas? Or: where did that Thomas go? Perhaps at some point on the road to the Azteca, or in the heat of Miami, Tuchel lost the simple faith that had brought England to this point.This is how you end up with six defenders on the pitch, with Saka and Watkins and Kobbie Mainoo and Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke all fresh and unused on the bench, with Cole Palmer and Phil Foden and Trent Alexander-Arnold and Adam Wharton and Morgan Gibbs-White at home. Between the second hydration break and the second Argentina goal, England had less than 8% possession, completed just five passes in 25 minutes, allowed a 39-year-old player from Major League Soccer to play exactly the sort of game he would have craved.Let us not relitigate every single one of these decisions in isolation; what is being argued here is a broader direction of travel. For an England fan this is perhaps the part that hurts the most: we believed in this team and these players right to the end. What if Tuchel never really believed in them at all?“Ball possession is not in our DNA like it is in the Spanish DNA or the Argentinian or Brazilian DNA,” Tuchel said after the game. If this was once undeniably true, it is now at best arguable and at worst a form of gaslighting that should disqualify Tuchel from the job on the spot. Rice, Saka, Mainoo, Elliot Anderson, Eze, Reece James, John Stones: based on what we know of them at club level, are these players who have trouble keeping the ball? Perhaps it is no wonder that in subsequent days reports have emerged from the England camp that the players themselves were unhappy with Tuchel’s safety-first approach: an approach that left them with no outlets, no options, no tools except the bluntest of all.These are players who want to play football, who want to express themselves, backed by thousands who emptied their life savings to travel, to pursue, to feel something. This is no longer a nation that punches pitifully below its weight at international level, that neglects the tactical and technical aspects of the game, that quivers at the thought of penalties. Is it unreasonable to demand a coach who sees what these players can do, rather than imagine what they can’t? There are those who argue soberly that changing the coach at this point is a triumph of emotion rather than reason, that there is nobody better out there, that there is a lucrative contract that needs to be honoured.But for a coach hired to win these hinge moments, detonating a World Cup semi-final feels like the ultimate red-flag behaviour. And beyond this the small-mindedness, the absence of ambition, the audacity required to neg the entire English game rather than admit to one’s own cowardice. Tuchel was hired to unleash the considerable potential of a supreme generation of English footballing talent. From what we’ve seen, it’s not immediately clear whether he can even see it.

Football News

Head coach refuses to engage in ‘blame game’ after defeat by ArgentinaTrump joins critics of Tuchel’s tactics in World Cup semi-final eliminationThomas Tuchel has insisted he is not interested in engaging in the “blame game” over England’s World Cup elimination and vowed to close the gap on the leading nations.Even Donald Trump has joined criticism of Tuchel’s tactics in the semi-final defeat by Argentina, with the US president questioning why he made Harry Kane “a defensive player” as England attempted to hold on to a 1-0 lead. But before the third-place playoff against France in Miami on Saturday night that was described by Tuchel as “the match no one wants to play in”, England’s head coach defiantly stood by his decisions and said that he and his players must learn from their experiences.“I believe that three other nations [in the semi-finals] have almost expectations to win the title. This is not us,” said Tuchel. “France, Spain, Argentina expect almost they’re on that level that they expect to win. We are not there yet. There is still a gap to close. This is what we will do from tomorrow. We will not stop. We will not stop hunting. We will not stop challenging. We have things to improve in a football matter. And this is the context. So there is not a lot of room for drama. If drama is needed, if the blame game needs to be played, OK, we can do that. But I have the right to not engage.”Asked whether he had any regrets over his decisions after 48 hours of reflection, Tuchel added: “I felt that we had to do something different for the team, and I took a decision, trusting my instinct, my intuition, my experience, trusting my competitiveness, and I took the decision in order to help the team and get the result. But the decisions are made under stress. The decisions are made in game. I would regret it if we didn’t react. But I have no regrets over the decision itself.”Tuchel also dismissed Trump’s comments that were made earlier during a press conference with the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino. “They took the lead, and they took their best player and put him on defence,” said Trump. “We have got to be a little offensive, right? But no I’m not going to call it. What do I know about coaching? It was unusual.”Tuchel at first questioned whether “you use Donald Trump as your witness?” when asked about his comments. But he was adamant that Kane had merely been following instructions.“We defended in a deep block. That’s what you do if you defend in a block. You defend in a block,” he said. “We were not active enough. We could not escape the deep block. That is what teams build: togetherness and mentality is translated to in football terms. We defend as a 10 and as an 11. Together as a team, the team spirit, the togetherness, the mentality that this team built in the last six and a half weeks, is not to be questioned.”England trained at their Kansas City base for the last time on Friday but their arrival to Miami – the venue for their quarter-final victory over Norway – was delayed by thunderstorms in the area. Jude Bellingham and Jordan Henderson were among the players who were pictured sampling a barbecue on Thursday night. John Stones admitted that it had been hard to process the pain of defeat.“We are still going through a lot of suffering and pain,” he said. “The nature of this game is we as players take things very personally. That’s why we are where we are and why we’re always striving for more. I think everyone felt that [we could win it]. That’s why to go out in a semi-final hurts even more because we believed so much and didn’t get to where we believe we should be.”

Football News

Wildfires, transport issues and the appearance of the president could overshadow the final for a city that has embraced the tournamentThe thick smoke that has engulfed New York and much of the eastern seaboard over the last few days has drawn wry smiles in Dallas and Los Angeles, where locals will watch on with a sense of schadenfreude when the World Cup final takes place in the New York New Jersey Stadium (usually known as the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey) on Sunday.The Dallas and Los Angeles stadiums, which were passed over when Fifa awarded the final in February 2024, are more impressive venues without the same climatic risks as New York, which was chosen because of its global appeal and favourable timezone for European television audiences.Initial concerns over staging the final at MetLife focused on the extreme heat that often grips New York in the summer, leading to playing conditions that Chelsea’s Enzo Fernández described as “very dangerous” after last year’s Club World Cup semi-final, with the poor air quality this week presenting Fifa with an unexpected curveball.Wildfires in Canada’s wildlands have led to thick smoke spreading south across many of the eastern US cities, with an air quality advisory altered from “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” late on Thursday.New York City Hall’s emergency management officials issued a citywide code red for Tuesday to Thursday, telling residents to stay inside unless absolutely necessary and to avoid strenuous exercise, hardly conditions for the biggest match in global sport, which is expected to attract a worldwide television audience of 1.6 billion.The smoke was clearly visible in downtown Manhattan, unlike the Statue of Liberty across the Hudson River that was temporarily hidden from view, with conditions so bad that many flights from New Jersey’s Newark airport were cancelled.Conditions began to improve on Friday and Fifa officials are confident the situation will improve for Sunday, particularly as rain is forecast for Saturday that it is hoped will clear the worst of the smoke, but sport has been affected.A National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) match between Gotham and Washington Spirit in Queens on Wednesday took place in an orange-brown haze, and the players were ordered to take an additional two breaks during each half in accordance with the NWSL’s poor air policy.Given the furore surrounding Fifa’s introduction of hydration breaks at the World Cup, the prospect of two more stoppages would cause further outrage.The weather problems are particularly unfortunate for New York, because although the final venue was chosen with a global audience in mind, the city has really embraced the World Cup.Although the New York Knicks’ historic NBA championship win over San Antonio Spurs overshadowed the start of the marathon tournament last month, it has developed genuine momentum since.All seven previous games at MetLife have been sold out, and restaurant and bar bookings to watch England’s semi-final defeat by Argentina this week were hard to come by.The biggest remaining issue affecting the final beyond the weather is likely to involve getting to the stadium, which is regarded by NFL fans as famously inaccessible, given limited public transport and the perils of negotiating the Lincoln Tunnel, which links Manhattan with New Jersey.To compound matters, parking is available only for guests and VIPs on Sunday, and the cost of bus and rail travel has been increased significantly for the tournament. A joint intervention from the governments of New York and New Jersey, who have provided a subsidy, has led to an initial matchday return price of $150 (£112) to use the New Jersey transit trains being reduced to $98, but it remains very high for a 20-minute journey. For those balking at such prices, shuttle buses from Manhattan will be available for $20.Donald Trump is likely to make a rather showier entrance, with his helicopter Marine One due to fly over the stadium before landing at nearby Teterboro airport, and although Fifa will not say so publicly, managing the president is its other remaining concern. After the controversy caused by Trump appearing to gatecrash Chelsea’s Club World Cup final celebrations, which left the captain, Reece James, particularly bemused, Fifa has attempted to get ahead by confirming that he will present the trophy with the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino.A precedent was set four years ago when the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, placed a traditional Arab cloak on Lionel Messi’s shoulders before Argentina’s captain collected the trophy from Infantino. With Trump, there is no knowing what he may have planned.

Football News

Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long I really had hope of reaching the World Cup final. And it didn’t kill meIn her book Hope in the Dark the author Rebecca Solnit examines if it is possible to have hope when you consider all of human suffering. She quotes the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” By all accounts it is a compelling argument for hope as a catalyst for social change.Meanwhile, Graham Burrell wrote: “It is the hope that kills you” following Lincoln City’s 2-1 home defeat to Wigan in 2024. “I feel perhaps our playoff push was finally killed off yesterday.”It is hard to know where exactly to place that defeat at Sincil Bank in the pantheon of human suffering. And the same goes for England’s capitulation to Argentina on Wednesday.And it is also hard to find the first person who ever said: “It is the hope that kills you.” It could be anyone from William Shakespeare to Peter Ustinov. Many have developed it. Ted Lasso, for example: “So, I’ve been hearing this phrase y’all got over here that I ain’t too crazy about. ‘It’s the hope that kills you’. Y’all know that? I disagree, you know? I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”And then there’s Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses. “It’s not the hope that kills you. It’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you – that kills you.”You wonder if England would have fared better in those last 30 minutes with Lasso or Lamb in the dugout. Their respective approaches would have been slightly different. Lasso certainly wouldn’t have played a back six. They wouldn’t sit back. Lamb would call them all idiots and tell them to get on with it. Arm round the shoulder or kick up the arse – the full spectrum is here.But what any England fan, or any sports fan knows – is that hope, as a pure emotion, is perhaps the most incapacitating. Hope isn’t immediate. Hope doesn’t really exist at the start of the game. It certainly plays second fiddle to fear. Fear during the buildup, fear during the ludicrous 10-second countdown, fear as the ball rolls back to Jordan Pickford. I could feel, almost hear, my heart beating at twice its normal rate.As the game settles, the heart settles. Well, settles is perhaps the wrong word. It is base-level angst with little pockets of rage as Giuliano Simeone harries and hacks and kicks and growls. Where’s the yellow card? Are the conspiracists right? He fails to kick Marc Guéhi and then goes with his head like a shark biting thin air too far out of the water. By now, even well-timed tackles by Argentinians are evil. Fouls by English players are justified. Another pint of myopia, please.Half-time is where the first waves of pessimism appear. The longer this goes, the more likely Argentina will do it. They know how to do it. I say meaningless things like “muscle memory”. I say meaningful things like “wily bastards”.And then the goal. The perfect cross. The perfect finish. It is an outpouring of joy and relief and possibility. It is the first real moment of hope, combined with the “Well, at least they need two now” mindset – we’ve all watched England for long enough.The only other ecstatic moment is the Djed Spence tackle. Spence has looked so relaxed he’s barely bothered about any of this. Just be surprisingly brilliant and then go home and do the washing-up. But that celebration – like Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci together. “Yes, Djed!” I shout. The greatest England tackle since Eric Dier on Sergio Ramos – and wildly more important. If things had gone differently, that would headline your montage. That would be one of your statues.Now, there’s a chance that someone else in the game has mentioned England dropping deep already. Was it Thomas Tuchel? Was it the players? Is it just English paralysis? Chances are you don’t need another tactical deep dive – I know I don’t.This is about the few minutes where the hope was genuine. Where I started to think about a World Cup final. The enjoyable part of the tournament isn’t the games, it’s just still being in the thing. It’s being able to watch other matches knowing you still have a dog in the fight. The actual game itself is the ordeal you have to endure.The retreat had already started before the hydration break. But how many of us said: “It’s too soon to defend this.” With 10 men at the Azteca it made sense. Even if England are able to see this out, can I handle torture? But time keeps going, and with every missed chance, with every save, hope beganto creep in.In the 82nd minute, Nico O’Reilly blocks a pass and chases it down and gets another block. We are in their half – a foreign land. I shouted to my Football Weekly colleague John Brewin: “That’s saved eight seconds.” A minute later Lionel Messi lofts a cross harmlessly out of play for a goal-kick. That was the moment I thought maybe. Just maybe.I began to think about England being in a World Cup final – selfishly, what a dream few days to be in New York, preview podcasts and TalkSport shows writing themselves. I could do a column about hope – but about the other hope. What a privilege.Goal-kick to England. Scoring a goal is hard, even if you have Messi. John Stones is doing keepy-ups. Pickford launches the goal-kick up field and O’Reilly gets on the end of it. Throw to Argentina deep in their half. “Eighty-four minutes on the clock now,” says Guy Mowbray. “I keep looking at that clock and thinking it’s going ever so slow,” says Alan Shearer.84’24. Enzo Fernández shoots from distance. Pickford tips it over. It’s going over. But it’s OK. Just keep your shape. 84’55. Enzo has too much time on the edge of the box. Enzo shoots. Enzo scores – and we all know it’s done.Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long I really genuinely had hope. And it didn’t kill me. It was thrilling, terrifying and life-affirming. I have spoken before about whether I’ll ever be ready to see England’s men win anything – and maybe I’ll never have to test that emotion. But for the time being hope is actually enough for me. Just a morsel of it. If hope can be a catalyst for social change, if it can help us change the world, then it can help us imagine Adam Wharton lifting the European Championship trophy in 2028, even just for a fleeting moment.

Football News

Spain’s streak started after a defeat in 2024 but Argentina are no slouches – they are on an unbeaten run of 14 matchesSpain look unstoppable. Their 2-0 victory over France meant that they have not lost a game in normal or extra time for 37 games, which Opta revealed has equalled the best such stretch by a European team. However, Spain did lose the final of the 2025 Nations League to Portugal on penalties.Their “unbeaten run” matches the efforts of Italy between October 2018 and September 2021, a streak which included Roberto Mancini’s side winning Euro 2020. Unlike Spain, Italy were truly unbeaten.No team from South America has ever gone as long without defeat. Brazil went 36 matches unbeaten between December 1993 and January 1996, winning a World Cup along the way, while Argentina equalled their great rivals from July 2019 to November 2022. The latter’s run might have been ended by a stunning loss to Saudi Arabia in Qatar, but recovering from that to become world champions was an emphatic response.For Spain to have reached this point is no surprise when you consider their history. They are responsible for six of the 11 instances of a European nation going unbeaten for at least 25 games. Five of these periods have occurred within the past 22 years, emphasising how dominant Spain have been for the last two decades.They can call upon players with even better records. Fabián Ruiz has represented his country 49 times without losing (shootouts notwithstanding). Despite the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder proving his elite ability in recent years, Ruiz has not played the most minutes in Spain’s current unbeaten stretch. He’s not even in the top five.The leading man has been Marc Cucurella, with Unai Simón, Aymeric Laporte, Lamine Yamal and Mikel Oyarzabal completing the quintet upon which Luis de la Fuente has leant most heavily.The Spain manager has used 62 players in the 37 matches, which highlights the depth of talent his country has produced. Or perhaps it suggests a degree of indecisiveness on De la Fuente’s part. Hardly: of the 15 players who have made at least 20 appearances in the unbeaten run, 10 started the World Cup semi-final, four came on as substitutes and Martín Zubimendi was an option on the bench.It was a 1-0 loss to Colombia at the London Stadium in March 2024 that drew the start line for Spain’s current unbeaten run. The streak inevitably includes victories over Europe’s lesser lights in tournament qualifiers, but also 11 matches against Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.Argentina are unbeaten for 14 matches and it’s worth noting they have won them all. They’ve also lost three times since Spain were last beaten, though. The weight of recent history remains firmly on the side of De la Fuente’s men.