FIFA World Cup 2026

[Sainthood 2.0]

England could've easily beaten Argentina if they hadn't parked the bus as they say in soccer slang. But what can you do.

 

[ChineseTiger1986]

We took out France.
Shame we couldn't do it to Argentinians.

The semi-final was the real deal, and the third place feels like a friendly match.

 

[Davey Crockett]

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[Davey Crockett]

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Tomorrow forecast is fair air quality.

 

[KingQamaR]

England could've easily beaten Argentina if they hadn't parked the bus as they say in soccer slang. But what can you do.

exhibition game win against a team who obviously didn’t want to play until they got an earful at halftime and once again England fans cant help losing the run of themselves and say “ if we played like that we’d have won the World Cup.” It was an entertaining game, but please, for love of god , show some intelligence bros don’t slip back into England derangement syndrome.

 

[KingQamaR]

Forgive my cynicism....Basically, France expected a leisurely kick around, which would have been normal for such an exhibition match.

England came out and took it waaaaay too seriously.

Then France got angry and had a go back but missed some golden opportunities and England closed the game out as newly vindicated champions of everything. Tuchel will be forgiven too because his masterful tactics of "score as many goals as you can" won this oh so important match. Mbappe will get his golden boot and Paris will see riots anyway, as it always does regardless of the result of any actual football match ever.

Bring on tomorrow for the actual football and we can hopefully forget about this WWF theatrical production.

An absolutely pointless match. Easy to win meaningless friendlies. 10 goals in a World Cup game, that never happen. If it was a semifinal it would be France 3-0 England.

 

[ghazi52]

 

[ghazi52]

At a glance

• Third-placed finish is England men's best World Cup result since 1966 triumph
• Three Lions lead 4-0 at half-time through Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and Bukayo Saka double
• France dominate after break and hit back through Kylian Mbappe (two) and Bradley Barcola
• Mbappe becomes World Cup's all-time leading scorer with 22 goals - one ahead of Argentina's Lionel Messi
• Saka completes hat-trick late on before Ousmane Dembele replies again for France in injury time
• Jude Bellingham makes it 6-4 in 98th minute with his seventh goal of the tournament - the most by an Englishman at a single World Cup

 

[ghazi52]

Emma Smith
BBC Sport journalist

The match nobody wanted to play in became the match nobody wanted to end.

England's 'bronze final' - formerly known as the third-place play-off - against France descended into chaos with 10 goals, six of them for the Three Lions. And there could easily have been more.

Bukayo Saka became just the second England player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup knockout match, after Sir Geoff Hurst in the 1966 final. The only other player to score a treble versus France in the competition was Pele in 1958.

And it means England achieved their highest men's World Cup finish since winning the tournament in 1966 - and their best-ever result on foreign soil.

They did so in the highest-scoring World Cup third-place match ever, surpassing France 6-3 West Germany in 1958, and by beating a side higher in Fifa's rankings at a World Cup for the first time since the win over Argentina in 2002.

 

[ghazi52]

How an incredible match unfolded​

Rice fires England into early lead against France

The goalscoring started in the third minute when Rice - captaining England with Harry Kane on the bench - intercepted a loose Desire Doue pass on the halfway line, charged forward and slammed a shot past France keeper Mike Maignan from the edge of the box.

The Arsenal midfielder then provided the assist for the second goal, with his near-post corner flicked in by the head of defender Konsa.

Both sides left wide-open gaps in a match that carried the air of an end-of-school-term blowout - and England took advantage with two more goals before half-time.

Saka had the whole France half to himself amid a sharp breakaway and was initially denied by Maignan, but eventually scored from a follow-up after being teed up by Marcus Rashford.

The Arsenal winger doubled his tally in stoppage time, finishing a smart through-ball from club team-mate Eberechi Eze with an angled left-foot strike.

France narrowed the deficit after 48 minutes with Mbappe's first-time finish, before Barcola slammed past Dean Henderson at the near post six minutes later.

 

[ghazi52]

Messi on the brink of history - will it be his last World Cup game?​

Lionel Messi has scored 15 of his 21 World Cup goals in 2022 and 2026

Charlotte Coates and Emma Smith,
BBC Sport journalist

Argentina are one win away from sporting immortality.

Lionel Scaloni's side are bidding to become just the third team to win successive World Cups, after Italy (1934 and 1938) and Brazil (1958 and 1962).

If they are to pip European champions Spain to the crown, they will need Lionel Messi to be at his best. Again.

Is he the greatest of all time?

Whatever your response to that statement - and it could be debated for hours - it cannot be denied that the Argentine maestro is among the best players to ever set foot on a pitch.

Win on Sunday and Messi will become the first captain to lift the World Cup trophy twice.

 

[ghazi52]

 

[ghazi52]

England v Mexico​

This image captures the collective focus of a stampede of England and Mexico players, led by Harry Kane and Jesús Gallardo, as it competes for the ball in Round 16 in Mexico City on 5 July. It appears almost choreographed in its measured momentum. Suspending the scrum's static acceleration, Julian Finney's photo recalls the velocity and vectors of a modernist masterpiece: Umberto Boccioni's Futurist formation, The Charge of the Lancers, 1916.

 

[ghazi52]

More games, more controversy - good and bad of biggest World Cup yet​

Argentina and Spain will contest the World Cup final at the New York/New Jersey Stadium on Sunday
Dale Johnson
Football issues correspondent
18 July 2026

Fifa president Gianni Infantino promised the 2026 World Cup would be the "biggest event in the history of mankind".

Infantino likened the tournament in the United States, Mexico and Canada to 104 Super Bowls in one month.

It was a bold claim, so did it pan out like that?

For the first time, the World Cup featured 48 teams, with Curacao, Cape Verde, Jordan and Uzbekistan making their debuts. But did this dilute the quality of the tournament?

Then there are the mandatory, three-minute hydration breaks, regardless of conditions, which enabled broadcasters to cash in with commercials.

High ticket prices brought great controversy, but did they keep fans away?

The politicising of the World Cup began before the tournament with visa issues and Iran's participation, then US President Donald Trump intervened to get Florian Balogun's red card overturned.

Pierlugi Collina, Fifa's head of referees, waged war on time-wasting and pushed through a raft of law changes. But did this make a real difference?

This is the story of the World Cup.

 

[ghazi52]

Was the World Cup expansion really worth it?​

Cape Verde's qualification for the knockout rounds vindicated Gianni Infantino's decision to expand the tournament to 48 teams

If you wanted great storylines and colour, then the group stage was a success.

Watching debutants is always part of the allure of a World Cup, and Cape Verde brought it in spades.

A tiny archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean with just 530,000 people, Cape Verde claimed incredible draws against Spain and Uruguay (and Saudi Arabia too) to finish second.

Curacao shrugged off their 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany to claim a shock point against Ecuador, too. And DR Congo claimed a draw against Portugal and got out of their group.

Without these stories, the group stage would have been pretty dull, with the major nations making light work of it.

Seventy-two matches - more games than an entire World Cup used to have - to lose just 16 teams.

It was made worse by Fifa using head to head over goal difference as the first tie-breaker.