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9 hours ago
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Key events
Thomas Tuchel told last night’s presser that he was giving his team afternoons off and time with families, to create the kind of relaxed atmosphere with which he is not always perhaps readily associated. I finally finished watching Dear England last night, and it immediately prompted thoughts about the cultural gear change from Gareth Southgate to Tuchel. Also, even allowing for a playright’s creative licence, it’s striking how impressive and admirable Harry Kane comes across. The whole thing – angst, hysteria and all – is a decent appetite-whetter for this tournament anyway.
Good to see Paul Gascoigne out and about. The totemic Italia 90 star was on Good Morning Britain this morning talking about England’s prospects and the importance of team spirit, as PA Media reports:
“You want 11 captains on the pitch and when you are playing in a game like that, at a World Cup, you cannot afford to carry anyone,” Gascoigne said. “Everyone has to be on the ball and the team spirit is important.
“The players that didn’t play [om 1990], they were right behind the team, so our team spirit was unbelievable. The most important thing is team spirit because that goes a long way.”
When asked what he would say to the current squad, the 59-year-old added: “Enjoy it. Because you just never know it could be your last World Cup.”
More on the referee Omar Artan. Morgan Ofori preaches it.
So what does Fifa do about a World Cup in which the influence of Donald Trump – a man its leaders so publicly sought to cultivate – begins to affect the very architecture of their showpiece event? What does the organisation’s head, Gianni Infantino, however busy he may be organising absurd baubles for Trump or fighting legal threats from his own predecessor, say or do in moments like this?
He does what he is doing: he effectively shrugs and counts the dollars, measures the prestige growth and pretends all is well while the house catches fire. He seeks African expansion while willingly throwing certain nations under the bus for the prestige of a US World Cup. The Fifa he leads chooses complicity over courage.
How are you scheduling your middle of the night viewing, if you’re in Europe? Anyone who’s ever watched a Premier League live feed in a bar at 2am in Melbourne knows that following the game from Australia can be a body-clock wrecker. So Christopher Knaus from Guardian Australia has compiled this handy guide:
This is the lot of us longsuffering Australian football fans. Football and sleep deprivation walk hand-in-hand in this country. The waking weekend hours are a haze and Mondays are four-coffee days. We gamble so much more on that 90 minutes. A scoreless stalemate takes on new levels of frustration when you know it’s going to leave you functionally impaired for 24 hours.
And now, while we Australians find ourselves in a position of relative bliss, the shoe is, of course, very much on the other foot in the UK. This World Cup, held in Canada, Mexico and the US, has given England fans manageable group-stage fixtures. But Scotland fans are being hit with a 2am kick-off, right off the bat. Others are staring down the barrel of midnight and 3am starts. Forty-four of the 104 games are being played between midnight and 5am UK time.
So, I’m here to offer you the wisdom of football fans who were born on the wrong side of the planet. We’ve tried every approach you are now contemplating.
Referee Artan gets hero's welcome in Somalia
The World Cup referee who was denied entry to the United States arrived on Wednesday in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, where he was received by a crowd of supporters and officials …
“I promise you, God willing, that I will attend the next one,” he said as hundreds of supporters at the airport waved the Somali flag. “I want the Somali public to take comfort in this and remain confident.”
A couple of items of club news: Benfica have confirmed the arrival of former Fulham gaffer Marco Silva on a two-year deal. Silva replaces José Mourinho, about whom probably more later, with Real Madrid set to formally announce the Portuguese’s return today. Ben Davies has signed a new Spurs deal, and Raul Jiménez has signed for Wolves for a second time, agreeing a two-year contract with the newly relegated club.
Some reading for you all to catch up on:
Jacob Steinberg on England’s need for attacking alternatives that aren’t built entirely around Harry Kane.
Our DR Congo and Uzbekistan team guides
Luke Entwistle’s interview with the hugely successful but not always greatly appreciated Didier Deschamps
And this week’s Knowledge, on repeat opening fixtures, the prominence of former Everton managers at World Cup 2026, and more.
England are gearing up for their final pre-tournament warmup, against Costa Rica in Orlando, with notes of caution being sounded about Bukayo Saka’s fitness. Thomas Tuchel said that while Saka’s fellow Arsenal late-arrivers Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke were pretty much up to speed, “Bukayo is just not there yet. Some things are missing … consecutive trainings. They took very good care of him [at Arsenal] and were very aware of it and we will do a little bit the same. He is at the moment not able to do every training session through the week and then play. He is still going to be managed”.
David Hytner has the full story:
Preamble
Morning/evening/middle-of-the-night everyone. And welcome to Wednesday’s World Cup liveblog, with around 35 hours to go to the big kick-off. Excited? I kind of am, in spite of myself. Because yesterday was a pretty unedifying day, as some of the fears around the cruel politicisation of the tournament came to fruition, with the fallout from the barring of the Somali referee Omar Artan, members of Iran’s entourage being denied admission to the US and their ticket allocation being seemingly withdrawn, plus the earlier long detention on arrival of the Iraq striker Aymen Hussein. Fifa, normally so insistent on imposing full colonial demands on host countries, has acquiesced with all this.
But never mind, because Fifa overlord Gianni Infantino has been joshing about the US being invaded by friendly “barbarians”. Speaking at the tournament’s star-studded launch shindig in LA, the Fifa president quipped: “You will be invaded. You will be invaded by a horde of barbarians. But it’s happy barbarians, don’t worry.
“Men, women, children, grandparents, doesn’t matter, they will all have their faces colored with the colors of their countries,” he said. “They will just want to enjoy and have fun because that’s what we want to do with the World Cup – we want to unite the world.” Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, back in the real world Argentina beat Iceland 3-0 in Auburn, Alabama, in their final World Cup warmup. Lionel Messi came off the bench in the second half and scored his side’s second goal, from a penalty, as he continues to manage hamstring soreness. Valentin Barco had put Argentina ahead in the eighth minute, and Thiago Almeda wrapped things up with a third four minutes from time. Elsewhere, Iraq’s final tune-up before their Group I campaign begins ended in a 2-0 loss to Venezuela.
