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The reigning champions may need to continue outperforming their xG to overcome Spain’s superb defensive recordThe World Cup final will feature the champions of South America and Europe for the first time. Argentina and Spain sit first and second in Fifa’s world ranking of men’s international teams. Opta’s supercomputer rated Luis de la Fuente’s side as favourites to win the tournament, with their opponents on Sunday deemed fourth likeliest.Both systems had England and France in their top four, suggesting the semi-finals featured the correct teams. But do the statistics from the World Cup indicate we have the best pair for the final?Spain are unbeaten in 37 matches (excluding penalty shootouts) while Argentina have won their past 14 games. That is a reasonable starting point for justification, even before we dig into the data.The teams are, unsurprisingly, among the leaders for expected goals, though both have benefited from penalties. Stripping those out and factoring in time played reveals several teams had better pro-rata records. No team that reached the quarter-finals outperformed their non-penalty xG per 90 minutes by more than Argentina though.Given Spain’s defensive record, Argentina may need that trend to continue if they are to retain their crown. What Spain have achieved in protecting their goal should be talked about for years to come if they win their second World Cup.Spain have conceded 2.15 expected goals, a miserly 0.31 per match. It is comfortably the best record and an elite level of defensive consistency over seven games. Five teams allowed their opponents more than 2.15 xG in their first match, with 41 having crossed that mark by the end of the group stage.If this sounds like a significant advantage for Spain, it is not so clearcut. Argentina were the last of the other 47 teams to concede more than 2.15 xG , doing so when Yasser Ibrahim put Egypt 1-0 up in the last-16. The Argentinians can’t match Spain’s incredible defensive record, but no other team has kept a closer pace.It seems unlikely set pieces will be a factor. These sides are among the best defences in dead-ball situations without having been especially strong in attack. Would you bet against Lionel Messi converting his second direct free-kick goal of the tournament though?If that is unlikely, even for him, Messi has taken the most shots on either side (34, including two penalties). However, Lamine Yamal (23) and Mikel Oyarzabal (22, one penalty) are second and third respectively. While the former can be prone to firing at goal from poor locations, the latter has the best expected goals per shot average for either team (0.15).Or at least he does for those with a shot sample of at least 10; Mikel Merino (0.35) and Lautaro Martínez (0.22) have higher figures and may have a vital role to play from the bench. Both are adept at profiting from big chances in key moments. With the teams being similarly strong, a substitute may well prove decisive.Opta give Spain a 45% chance of winning in 90 minutes with Argentina rated as a 26% shot. The tournament data suggests it should be closer than their prediction implies.

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France beaten 6-4 on ‘very emotional’ day for squad‘This will help – but you never fully celebrate bronze’Thomas Tuchel has said England’s players can be proud of their efforts after a thrilling 6-4 victory over France sealed third place at the World Cup for the first time.England raced into a 4-0 lead at half-time thanks to goals from Declan Rice – the stand-in captain – Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka. But they were pegged back to within one goal after Didier Deschamps, taking charge of his final France game after 14 years, rang the changes at the break. Kylian Mbappé took his tally at this tournament to 10 goals and 22 at World Cups in total as he pushed to win a second successive Golden Boot and surpassed Lionel Messi’s all-time record. The Argentina forward will have a chance to overhaul him in Sunday’s final against Spain.Saka completed his hat-trick before Ousmane Dembélé made it 5-4 in injury-time and it was left to Jude Bellingham to have the final say after coming off the bench with his seventh goal of the tournament – the most by an England player at a World Cup.England were within five minutes plus stoppages of reaching their first World Cup final on foreign soil until Messi inspired the reigning champions’ late comeback in Atlanta on Wednesday. Tuchel, who was booed by some supporters when his name was read out before kick-off here, said in the buildup to this match that England had to show they were capable of cutting the gap to the leading nations. After hanging on for the win against the 2018 world champions, he has challenged his players to keep improving, starting with their Nations League meeting with Spain at Wembley on 26 September.“This game will help us for sure – even if you can never fully celebrate a bronze medal,” Tuchel said. “It’s the first [World Cup] medal for 60 years, first [at a] World Cup on foreign soil, and I hope the players can be proud of that at some point. We set ourselves the highest dream to chase, and we were very, very ambitious with our dream to make the final in the World Cup. So it’s very, very painful if you miss out, the pain will stay for a while.”Tuchel revealed that Jordan Henderson had delivered a speech before the game that had helped to put their achievement in perspective. “He put us in the right frame of mind, with everyone in one mindset. It was unbelievable because today was very emotional. We built something very special in the last seven weeks, and we’ll never negotiate on that. I still stand by my words, that we need to play better football, manage games better under pressure, take better decisions under pressure. We need to defend more economically.”Tuchel’s assistant, Anthony Barry, had given an emotional half-time interview when England were 4-0 up when he expressed surprise at the level of the performance given that they were “playing a game with broken hearts”. “The cynics will say it’s too late but we still play against a world-class opponent and I’m so proud of the boys,” he told the BBC. “There’s 45 minutes to go. The game’s not done. Anything can happen. But I’m proud of the team and I hope everyone is as well at home.”Saka was an unused substitute against Argentina and the Arsenal forward admitted he was disappointed not to have been involved. “Of course I would love to have played more but it’s too late to talk about that,” he said. “I try to do my talking on the pitch and it’s done now – let’s move on.“We fell short against Argentina. It hurts a lot. I’m sure it’s the same for the fans back home. We have to hold our heads high and move on. Obviously we’re both quite disappointed to not be in the final but it was about finishing strong and for us giving the country the best position in the World Cup they have finished for 60 years, so we’re happy with the final result.”Zinedine Zidane is poised to take over from Deschamps, who became only the third person to win the World Cup as a player and manager and said he was departing with no regrets after reaching the 2018 and 2022 finals.“I could have changed eight of them at half-time,” he joked about his team’s first-half display. “It is the end of a journey that has represented the most beautiful period of my life. I always put the French team first. You can be called by the best clubs in the world but there is nothing above this national team. We have faced the greatest moments and I’m hoping for the team to reach new levels when I’m gone.”

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Where to start with this rollercoaster of a match? Thomas Tuchel had promised a reaction but he could not have imagined the manner of the response from England, albeit against a France team firmly on their sunloungers during an incredible first half in which they conceded four times.Yet with Kylian Mbappé on the hunt for his second successive Golden Boot in Didier Deschamps’ last match in charge of Les Bleus, even that lead courtesy of goals from Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka almost wasn’t enough. Mbappé began the comeback straight after half-time before adding his second after Bradley Barcola’s strike. The 27-year-old has become the first male player to reach double figures at a World Cup since Gerd Müller in 1970. Over to you, Lionel.Thankfully for England, Saka’s late penalty to complete his hat-trick and Jude Bellingham’s seventh of the tournament after he came off the bench ensured that an afternoon that had begun with boos for Tuchel from some supporters ended with England claiming third place at the World Cup for the first time. Although the scars of their semi-final loss to Argentina will remain, they at least rounded off their campaign with a memorable victory.Miami’s leaden skies throughout the day had matched the mood of both teams as they tried to put on a brave face after semi-final exits. As well as his attempt to overhaul Lionel Messi, Mbappé had extra motivation along with his teammates to send Deschamps off into the sunset with a victory after 14 years at the helm. The Real Madrid star published a message on social media in the hours before kick-off thanking the man who guided France to a second world title in 2018 and came so close four years later. “Today is your last dance,” he wrote.Tuchel signed a contract extension before this tournament and has indicated he wants to lead England into Euro 2028 on home soil. However after a tetchy pre-match press conference here on Friday night when the German doubled down on the conviction that he would make the same decisions again given the chance against Argentina, the next two years look set to be a test of his ability to rebuild his reputation among England’s supporters. The reception Harry Kane and the rest were given after England received their bronze medals suggested the players’ effort over the past five weeks has been fully appreciated.Like Deschamps, Tuchel made seven changes from the semi-final, with Rice surprisingly named captain in place of Kane despite carrying an injury for the entire tournament. Arsenal, who have serious concerns about how long William Saliba is likely to be sidelined with a back injury, will not have been delighted to find Saka starting either.There was also intrigue in the absence from the bench of Kobbie Mainoo, the Manchester United midfielder who has not played a minute at the World Cup. The Football Association said he was injured, although Jordan Henderson was listed among the substitutes despite the broken arm sustained celebrating England’s win over Mexico.At first, France seemed to be suffering from more of a hangover. Désiré Doué’s loose pass in the third minute was seized upon by Rice and his finish left Mike Maignan with no chance. Mbappé managed to tread on the ball just as he was speeding through on goal before Saka had a goal from an exquisite Morgan Rogers pass chalked off for offside. It needed a block from Maxence Lacroix to halt Saka’s next attack before Konsa beat his marker, Adrien Rabiot, to nod in Rice’s corner. England looked as if they had a point to prove.Marcus Rashford embarrassed Warren Zaïre-Emery with a nutmeg before unleashing a powerful shot that was well saved by Maignan. At the other end, Dean Henderson brilliantly denied Mbappé, who had cut in from the left, before another save ended up kickstarting the move for England’s third on the break. There was something comical about the way Rashford and Saka took turns trying to score before the latter eventually did. A brilliant pass from Eberechi Eze set up Saka’s second on the stroke of half-time. France’s players looked stunned, even if Mbappé tried his best to laugh it off.Deschamps responded by making four changes at the break, including Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola. They had pulled one back within three minutes when Mbappé finished Olise’s through ball after the England substitute Ollie Watkins lost possession. It was not long before Barcola was sprinting back to halfway with the ball tucked under an arm after making it 4-2. Mbappé added his second after exchanging passes with Olise on the edge of England’s area and suddenly Tuchel’s side were really wobbling.Somehow Olise could not hit the target to force extra time after toying with England’s defence. Bellingham and Elliot Anderson had been summoned from the bench by that stage and it was left to the former and Saka, who did not get off the bench against Argentina, to hammer the final nails into France’s coffin. Between times Dembélé pulled another goal back in this incredible spectacle that will surely go down as the game of the tournament.

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Hospitality and secondary ticket market help fuel riseGianni Infantino will feel this shores up his positionFifa’s member associations were informed of the boost in income by Gianni Infantino on Saturday. Originally the governing body had projected $11bn in earnings. Sources have indicated that hospitality and ticketing, especially through the steeply priced secondary market, account for a significant amount of the increase. Fifa takes 15% from the buyer and another 15% from the seller on the secondary market.It is likely that football associations will reap the benefits of Fifa’s expanded World Cup pot, although details are yet to be finalised. The financial situation will come as a boost to Infantino, who will feel it further shores up his position after a controversy-ridden month in the United States, Canada and Mexico.There was widespread fury after Fifa was perceived to have bowed to pressure from Donald Trump in suspending the red card given to Folarin Balogun, the US striker, against Paraguay in the last 16. Fifa has said the decision was taken independently by its disciplinary committee but that has continued to fester among European FAs in particular. Infantino has nevertheless received more than 200 pledges of support from Fifa’s member associations for his re-election in March. The prospect of extra funds from bumper World Cup revenue is likely to dissuade some FAs from making any discontent public.Such a bonanza may also increase the chances of the US hosting another edition in the near future. The next World Cup available for bids is the 2038 tournament. At a reception on Friday, Trump confirmed his country’s eagerness for a repeat performance. “You should choose the United States of America again,” he said. “This time we will leave Canada and Mexico out.” The US has also held talks with Fifa about hosting the Club World Cup in 2029.On Saturday evening VIP and hospitality packages for Sunday’s final between Spain and Argentina, which will be played in New Jersey, were still listed on Fifa’s ticketing portal. Tickets for the “trophy lounge” were retailing at $34,500 per person.

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Lee Matthews gets in touch: “On TT, I don’t think we all want to play the ‘blame game’ as he says. I think we just want to understand what happened. I think we could move on if he could help us understand what it was like to make that decision under the stressful conditions he and his team were experiencing.“Sat at home, we can say what we’d do without having to face the consequences. If he could open up and talk us through it, we could understand. More than any other tournament exit, I’m frustrated - my first WC was 1986. If he keeps saying he has ‘no regrets’ and these keep being the headlines, he’ll lose everyone’s support for good. Going for it tonight could help. Win or lose, if he goes for it, he can show what a post-WC TT England team will look like. Open up and talk to us TT and please go for it tonight… Fingers crossed….”

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Coach tells of first encounter when Messi was 16‘I took man-marker off and Messi scored four’Luis de la Fuente says he will not man-mark Lionel Messi in the World Cup final, even though the Argentina captain has scored eight times and provided four assists and the Spain coach’s own experience suggests it might not be a bad idea.In the buildup to Sunday’s final in New Jersey, De la Fuente told the story of the first time he encountered Messi, 22 years ago, when the Argentinian was a 16-year-old coming through at Barcelona, he was the youth-team coach at Sevilla and the under-19 cup draw brought them together in the last 16 in May 2004 at the Miniestadi.“I’m going to tell you something funny about Messi,” De la Fuente said. “Look, I met Lionel Messi when I was coaching at Sevilla in division de honour [the national under-19 league] and we played a Copa del Rey game against Barcelona. We went to Barcelona. They had spoken very well about a boy called Messi. So, we put a man-marker on him. In the 70th minute it was 0-0. When they gave a yellow card to the player who was marking him, I took him off. And in 15 minutes, Messi scored four goals.”De la Fuente continued, laughing: “Does that mean we are going to man mark him? No. Does it mean we will pay close attention to him? Yes, but in exactly the same way that they are going to have to pay attention to our players.”Asked whether Lamine Yamal was the nearest thing that Spain had to Messi, De la Fuente replied: “Lamine has to be Lamine. Messi can never be repeated. He is an extraordinary talent and above all an example for young players in his attitude, his behaviour, the spectacular World Cup he is producing and the age at which he is producing it. It will be a great show between two super teams. It will be a game of talent, brilliance, great play.”He pushed back against suggestions Argentina might employ dark arts, challenging the image of them as a dirty team. “Please,” he shot back. “I respect everyone’s opinions but no, I do not [accept that portrayal]. I have extraordinary admiration for a team that is Copa América [2021], World Cup, Copa América [2024] and Finalissima champions. No one has done that in history. And they are coached by a friend of mine [Lionel Scaloni]. Admiration, admiration, admiration. We will all use our footballing weapons.”De la Fuente also dismissed suggestions this final was “all or nothing”. “What is important is to be in the position to win it,” he said. “Let’s enjoy it, play our way, value this. If you said we could play a World Cup final every year and lose, I would sign up for that.”He said he was afraid of only one thing: the fact that Fifa had made him take a helicopter over from New Jersey to the pre-match events in Manhattan and that he still had to go back again. Nor was he impressed by a bombastic, chaotic Fifa event which Scaloni, visibly irritated, described as “surreal”. During the event, De la Fuente had struggled to speak over the noise of the audience shouting over him and cheering for Messi, who was also on the stage.“Since I was little, I was taught to be respectful of everyone; we should learn this lesson,” he told the crowd.

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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.

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“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.”

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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.

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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.

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Donald Trump spoke to Fifa president before ban liftedHuman rights body FairSquare sent complaint to IOCGianni Infantino is poised to escape without sanction after complaints he breached rules on political neutrality in his dealings with Donald Trump over the Folarin Balogun affair.The International Olympic Committee this week received a formal complaint from the human rights organisation FairSquare regarding Infantino’s conduct after Trump revealed he had called the Fifa president asking him to review Balogun’s ban from the USA’s last-16 tie against Belgium. The ban was subsequently suspended for 12 months after an unprecedented ruling from Fifa’s disciplinary committee.Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020, and its charter states that members must act independently of political and commercial interests. It adds that they cannot accept “from governments, organisations, or other parties, any mandate or instructions liable to interfere with the freedom of their action and vote”.FairSquare claims that Infantino’s discussions on the matter with Trump represent a breach. Infantino denies this and the Guardian has been told there is unlikely to be a formal investigation.IOC sources have disclosed that there is an extreme reluctance on its part to intervene in an international federation’s application of its own rules, particularly when internal appeals processes have not been exhausted.Another source said the balance of power between the IOC and Fifa has shifted significantly over the past two decades, with the former increasingly reliant on the latter for commercial revenue and relevance among younger audiences.With the next summer Olympic Games taking place in Los Angeles in 2028 the IOC will hope to capitalise on the football boom in the US that has brought record ticket sales and revenue raised from the World Cup, making any action on Balogun even more unlikely.Significantly the IOC has yet to receive complaints from Uefa or the Royal Belgium Football Federation, who both condemned the decision to suspend Balogun’s ban.The Belgian federation said it was keeping all legal options open, including a possible appeal to the court of arbitration for sport, but has been silent since the team were knocked out of the World Cup in the quarter-finals by Spain, with sources indicating it is ready to drop the matter.The federation’s president, Pascale Van Damme, is a member of Fifa Council, the governing body’s main decision-making organ.Infantino appears to have emerged from the scandal with his powerbase intact, with more than 200 of the 211 Fifa members having sent letters of personal endorsement to Fifa before next year’s presidential election.Infantino has admitted speaking to Trump about the issue, but a statement made in his name by Fifa last week said they spoke regularly on a range of subjects, and that he does likewise with other heads of state.Infantino also said the decision to revoke Balogun’s ban was taken independently by Fifa’s disciplinary committee. “They operate autonomously, apply the Fifa disciplinary code, and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them,” he said. “Their independence is essential to the credibility and integrity of football, and this must always be respected.”The Times reported last weekend that the decision to lift Balogun’s suspension was taken solely by the chair of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, Mohammad al-Kamali of the United Arab Emirates, but other sources within Fifa have indicated that he is being offered up as a scapegoat.A unilateral decision from al-Kamali would represent a significant departure from the disciplinary committee’s usual processes during a World Cup, which are based on three-person panels being appointed to oversee disciplinary matters and decisions taken by a majority vote.Panel members are selected from the 18 members of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, with Thomas Hollerer, the general secretary of the Austrian Football Association, chairing the panel from the quarter-finals.The Guardian has been unable to establish the identity of the panel members for the last 32, the stage of the tournament where Balogun was sent off in the USA’s 2-1 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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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.