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What about Algeria? Even Maher Mezahi isn’t sure what to expect.double quotation markAlgeria are one of this World Cup’s great unknowns. On paper, this team has an impressive recent record: a friendly victory over the Netherlands made it 21 wins, four draws and three defeats from 28 matches under Vladimir Petkovic, with 67 goals scored. The problem is that it has been achieved against generally poor-quality opposition. Algeria’s qualifying campaign was a breeze, with Guinea and Mozambique – both considered Pot C sides on the continent – being their sternest tests.We can be pretty sure Petkovic will lean on his players’ technical quality, play attractive football, but leave gaps in behind the defence. What we don’t know is which players will be called upon for half the starting positions.

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Midfielder did not declare rape charges against himTeam face Panama in World Cup in Toronto on WednesdayA judge in Canada has rejected Thomas Partey’s appeal to enter the country after the Ghana midfielder was denied entry for the World Cup.On Tuesday, Justice Roger Lafrenière, who heard the emergency application in Ottawa, rejected Partey’s request to override temporarily a decision by immigration officials. The Black Stars are due to in Toronto for the team’s opening match against Panama on Wednesday.In his judgement, Lafrenière sided with Canada’s immigration rules and said Partey failed to show grounds for emergency relief.At issue are the seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault Parey faces in the United Kingdom. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in London next year.In its rejection of his application, Canada has said immigration decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and that hosting the World Cup does not change the country’s immigration laws. Lafrenière said granting Partey relief would have “lawfully rendered inadmissibility finding and ⁠facilitate his entry for a specific event”.Notably, documents filed in court showed Partey had claimed he had not been charged with any criminal charges in any country when applying to enter Canada before the tournament. Partey was previously asked by Canadian immigration officials to clarify the charges he was facing in the UK.In an affidavit filed with the court, Partey pledged to remain under the supervision of team officials if permitted to enter Canada. He also promised to would leave the country in accordance with the tournament schedule.“I have not been convicted of any offence. I have pleaded not guilty, and I remain presumed innocent,” Partey said.The midfielder also said being unable to travel to Canada would “materially affect” Ghana’s ability to play in the tournament. “This is the first time that my country has qualified at the World Cup,” he also said in the affidavit. Ghana qualified for the previous tournament in Qatar, where Partey played in three games.Before the ruling, Ghana’s head coach, Carlos Queiroz, said he was prepared to “play with the cards that are in front of me”. He told reporters: “We are waiting for a decision. When the decision come, we are ready. We are ready to make the final approach to the game.”Partey was permitted to enter the United States for Ghana’s training camp and upcoming World Cup matches. He will be able to play in the two matches against England and Croatia, in Boston and Philadelphia.

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This was an ominous start from the World Cup favourites. A sputtering first-half performance gave way to a second period characterised by a combination of physical intensity and technical ability that few club sides, never mind nations, can match. Add on a record-equalling, then surpassing, couple of goals for Kylian Mbappé and some superlative playmaking from Michael Olise and this was very much a job well done for Les Bleus.After Mbappé tucked away a superb Olise pass just after the hour, a match that had started as a keenly fought contest faded away into a procession.The substitute Bradley Barcola doubled the lead in the last 10 minutes before a chaotic period of added time gave Senegal brief hope before a second goal for Mbappé, his 58th for France, which made him his country’s all-time leading goalscorer, ahead of Olivier Giroud.With numerous New York Knicks players in the stands of the MetLife Stadium there was a golden aura lingering over proceedings before kick-off.The best openings in the first 25 minutes, or hints thereof, went to France, Ousmane Dembélé almost threading a pass to Mbappé in the box in the 11th minute, only for the captain to fail to get the ball under control. There was some casual chest control from Kalidou Koulibaly in the 14th minute that ceded possession dangerously, but ultimately to no harm to Édouard Mendy. In the 24th minute, the former Chelsea keeper was nearly robbed on the edge of his own box by Dembélé but just held on.After surviving this initial scrappy passage, Senegal began to assert themselves more and created the first chance proper in the 25th minute.A sliding tackle from El Hadji Malick Diouf seized possession and his quick ball sent Nicolas Jackson clear down the left. He sped into the box and got his shot off which hit the inside of the near post and a diving Mike Maignan was fortunate to see it deflect wide off his heel.The hydration break followed almost immediately and after that Senegal were the better side, composed off the ball and increasingly dangerous on the break. Just before half-time they should have taken the lead, but after Sadio Mané ghosted into the France box and laid the ball off, Ismaïla Sarr made a poor contact and his shot sailed over the bar.France were lacking a clear attacking identity, but also a physical intensity and it was no surprise to see them return after the interval fired up and more assertive off the ball. Desiré Doué got his first shot off immediately after the restart but bent the ball around a post. Five minutes later the Paris Saint-Germain forward started his own break that almost put Mbappé through, only for the ball to be taken off his toe.Then Olise had his moment, a turnover in midfield resulting in the Bayern Munich winger clear one-on-one with Mendy, only for the keeper to make a crucial sprawling save. Four minutes later and, this time, Olise sent Mbappé clear but again Mendy was out to get a crucial contact on the shot.By the hour mark the game had decisively changed, France were the dominant team and a goal felt like it could arrive at any minute. So when Mbappé burst down the right and forced Mané into a sliding challenge inside the box, there was a collective holding of the breath. The referee, Alireza Faghani, awarded a corner, video replays seemed to suggest a foul, but after Faghani was directed towards the monitor, he chose not to change his mind to the surprise of almost everyone in the ground.The decision, however unusual, did not affect the direction of this match as Olise and Mbappé continued to purr. Almost immediately Olise burst through the middle of the pitch and slipped a ball beyond the Senegal defence which Mbappé just could not reach. No matter, because the next time the ball came to Olise, around 30 yards out, he bisected two lines of the opposition with a superlative pass cutting right to left across the field. Coming left to right, meanwhile, was Mbappé. He beat everyone to Olise’s pass, turned back on himself and slotted a first-time shot into the net with consummate ease.Jackson had a couple of efforts for Senegal after the opener and blazed one of them into the top corner only to be ruled offside. But the sense that this contest had been decided was strong as Les Bleus continued to play at a level their opponents couldn’t reach.Dembélé was withdrawn for Barcola, a closer for club and country, and he eliminated all doubt when running on to another diagonal through ball, this time from Adrien Rabiot who had burst through the growing gaps in midfield, and chipped calmly past Mendy.The game may have been decided but there was more action to come in a frenetic period of added time. First, the substitute Ibrahim Mbaye slammed in a shot which Maignan could not stop. Then Mbappé, not to be outdone, blasted one from range too, which Mendy might have done better with. One down, seven more to go.

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Hello all, and I hope you’re all enjoying the debate over the no-call in the France-Senegal match (unanimous view in the referees’ message board I frequent: correct no-call) and also the goal that followed.Follow along with Daniel Harris, and I’ll be back with a proper preamble when that one has ended.

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Hanging flags on LED advertising boards not allowedEngland fans face having flags confiscated when they attend their opening game of the World Cup against Croatia at Dallas Stadium on Wednesday.The England Supporters Club (ESC) is understood to have been advised by stadium officials that fans will not be allowed to hang flags over the LED advertising boards that surround the pitch, with only small flags to be allowed into the ground, which must be hung on rails behind the goals.The ESC has arranged for several large banners and flags to be displayed behind the goals, but casual supporters attempting to bring a flag into the ground are likely to have them confiscated.A number of Dutch and Japanese fans had flags confiscated at Dallas Stadium when attending the 2-2 draw on Sunday, but there have been no issues bringing them in at other grounds.Fifa’s tournament guide for fans states: “Small flags, banners and posters made of a fire-resistant material are allowed in the stadium. Larger flags, banners, posters or instruments must be approved in advance.”Ronan Evain, executive director of Football Supporters Europe, who was at the first game in Dallas, complained of a lack of consistency in enforcing Fifa’s guidelines. “You were not really allowed to bring a flag in, or at least to show it, which is inconsistent with most Fifa rules and regulations, but also what was allowed at previous tournaments,” Evain said. “Most of the flags were removed by the staff.“At a lot of the stadiums it hasn’t been a problem, so it’s hard to understand what is the actual policy and what is improvisation by the staff locally with the rules that they now have. The broader problem – and I think it’s a demonstration of how much Fifa has little control over this tournament – is that there’s no consistent rule, and when you look at what Fifa has published, there’s a code of conduct that is very broad.“But it never clarified a lot of things, like what sort of symbols are allowed and not allowed? Are you able to bring a flag of your region or city or club? A lot of this is still up in the air, and I think there’s a bit of learning by the venues, but also, again, inconsistency.”

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With the World Cup expanding to a massive 104 matches, navigating the "morass of endless football" can feel a bit overwhelming. Thankfully, the Guardian’s chief sports writer, Barney Ronay, has done the heavy lifting. He breaks down the group stage fixtures you absolutely cannot miss - from historic David v Goliath battles to high-stakes political showdowns. Continue reading...

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There are some fixtures that need only the names of the teams to get us going and France v Senegal is one such, a meld of nostalgia, history and righteous indignation. “I think Senegal will win,” says Othmane Sonoko, former prime minister and speaker of the Senegalese parliament, “but in any case, whichever team wins, it is Africa that will have beaten Africa.”The teams, of course, met in the World Cup 2002 opener, a game which featured one of the great centre-forward displays from El-Hadji Diouf and one of the great celebrations following Papa Bouba Diop’s goal, which secured one of the great shocks. Nor did things improve for France thereafter, eliminated bottom of the group with one point and no goals, the worst-ever performance from a defending champion. The teams have not met since.But as Sonoko implies, they remain inextricably linked. France began colonising Senegal in 1659, it wasn’t until 1960 that independence was retaken, and it was less than a year ago that France gave up the last of its military bases. No country has more World Cup players born within its borders than France, who account for 98 of the 1248 – Netherlands are next with 67, then England with 49 – of which 10 are representing Senegal.And what a squad they’re part of, Senegal solid at the back, but a lot more interesting further forward. Lamine Camara is a dynamic midfielder who blends old school new, able to do a bit of everything but at warp speed and is, presumably, soon to arrive at a Premier League team near you; alongside him, Pape Matar Sarr is already there, and there are various excellent candidates to complete the trio, as well as 18-year-old Bara Sapoko Ndiaye of Bayern Munich, likely to be kept in reserve but a very serious talent. Then, up front, Sadio Mané and Ismaïla Sarr will presumably flank Nicolas Jackson, with Iliman Ndiaye and Ibrahim Mbaye ready to explode off the bench. If you’re gently whistling to yourself, fear not: so you should be.In 1863, when various bodies in England were trying to standardise the laws of the game, a dispute developed regarding the banning of “hacking”, deliberately kicking an opponent’s legs – a point on which Francis Maule Campbell of Blackheath Football club took a strong position. “You will do away with all the courage and pluck of the game,” he said, “and I will be bound to bring over a lot of Frenchmen who would beat you with a week’s practise.”Well, the 2026 iteration are more than able to take care of themselves should things become physical – just ask Fede Valverde – but boast perhaps the most ridiculous cadre of attackers ever seen. Whether Didier Deschamps can perm the best combination from those available – perhaps – then allow them to express themselves – almost definitely not – remains to be seen, but at any point, both of those aspects can be overriden by talent of intense and divergent brilliance.If there’s one thing the games we’ve seen so far have taught us, it’s that we’ve no idea from where our eternal moments are coming, just that they are. So it feels vaguely silly to be make a bold statement about this one, but the piquant ingredients make it the likeliest banger of the group stages, and decent barometer of where these exciting outfits are it. Chauette! On y va!

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Tuchel’s multicultural squad are less burdened by narrative than previous teams and can embrace the chance to live in the momentNice World Cup you’ve got there. Be a shame if something … happened to it. The opening acts of this bloated, roided-up summer tournament have been surprisingly fun, light and sparky.Surprising, that is, if you’ve absorbed much of its doom-laden buildup. Football always does this. There is a reason this sport has become humanity’s great brain-wipe distractor ray, the tool of mega-brands and jumped-up administrators with a Football Jesus fetish. You can stretch it thin, loan it out to despotic regimes. But the games will still be good. Football remains an indestructible substance.So we’ve had joy and Cape Verdean tears, bow tie-twirling host nation razzmatazz, fans who seem, of all things, just happy to be here. In the United States the World Cup has felt like just another high functioning element of the leisure-sphere. It’s David Beckham selling chainsaws, crisps and beer. It’s Chuck Flipburger beaming into a camera outside the Anusol Megadrome saying: “Spain’s super-duper-star Lamine Yarrmaarrrl.”Even the games have been fearless and flowing and not, for example, dominated by a weird sense that everyone has their legs on backwards, that the ball is filled with helium and fear, that the whole experience is analogous to stabbing yourself in both eyes with a knitting needle made from pork-pie meat and self-loathing. Yeah, well. Enjoy that while you can.You can sit there playing with your silly little machines as much as you like. I’ll show you a World Cup. Close to a week in, with almost an entire round of cloudless group games in the bag, the coffin lid is starting to creak. By late Monday morning the first little knots of Three Lions shirts could be seen wandering the blank, baking streets of Dallas, blinking in the light. England are at the door. And it’s time for a vibe shift.Well, maybe. England will play Croatia on Wednesday at the Dallas Stadium, a thrillingly vast concrete dome dumped down in the low, throbbing plains to the south of the city. It is a genuinely spectacular venue, sealed on all sides beneath its swooping panelled roof, with the feel inside of a vast and humid tropical shed, a place to keep your pet stegosaurus.That Group L opener will be England’s first proper game in two years, a first meaningful regeneration of the England football identity since the last days of Gareth in Berlin, and as ever an opportunity to find out two things. First: are they any good? And second: what will it feel like? What is the energy? How much will it hurt? More importantly this time around, will people still care like they’re supposed to care?This has been the dualism of England football. Results can often seem like a distracting subplot from England content, England feelings, the idea that every tournament appearance is an angst-ridden referendum on national identity. Euro 2024 was the perfect example, marked by howls of frustration, booing of the players, hatred of the manager, blocked systems, basically just a disaster; but simultaneously the most successful overseas men’s tournament ever.There has been a shift in the nature of this. Interest in England football drops through the floor between tournaments these days but returns in reliably feverish form once the games begin. The change is also textural. You wouldn’t write a song about “hurt” any more. Younger people don’t feel the same bruised and helpless longing for victory. The England women’s team have won two tournaments. Club football and celebrity player-fawning have entered that space.The signifiers of England fandom, the songs, the yearning, the beer in the air, have been ritualised, transformed into a semi-ironical costume party, another way of going to the pub. This is not to say extreme England fandom has dissipated. People still love and follow the team. But this has also been radicalised on the fringes.It is worth noting a strange online event that flared up around England’s pre-World Cup friendlies, one that may come again now, and which speaks also to a defining early note of this World Cup. In the days after England’s 1-0 victory over New Zealand in Tampa there was a surge of nakedly racist posts, mainly on X, about England’s players not singing the national anthem, or singing it with insufficient gusto. Thomas Tuchel was asked about this in Kansas City and shrugged it off.But it is now out here, a lever, a wedge for targeted division. It feels even more jarring at a World Cup where there has already been a great deal of chat about cross-border nationality, about countries as porous, mutable things: the Swedish-Tunisian scoring goals for Sweden against Tunisia, the Curaçao team of dual-nationality Dutch.This is not a loss of shape, or a blurring of meaning, or the dissolution of the World Cup as a robust entity. This is the World Cup telling us what countries are, what countries have done, how countries become countries.England have a remarkable squad in many ways, one that reflects clearly the history of the nation. Of 26 players, 20 had the option to play for another country under Fifa heritage rules. Eight have Caribbean ancestry, 10 African, four Irish and three Scottish. A record low number, six of 26, are English and only English. It takes a wilful ignorance of history to interpret this as some kind of betrayal, migrant opportunism, or whatever the line is. It is instead a fine-point portrait of what England is and has been.Here’s an interesting stat. This World Cup is being contested by 48 nations. At some point in its relentlessly feisty imperial history, England or Britain have either invaded, occupied or taken military action against 44 of them (albeit this requires the broadest definition of all these things). The exceptions are Sweden, Uzbekistan and Côte d’Ivoire, who should all probably be watching their backs right now, particularly you, Sweden.And England aren’t alone here. Belgium have five players of Congolese descent, not because of some random insurgency but because Belgium effected a violent occupation of Congo for 75 years. Similarly, Curaçao’s rise on the back of its Dutch dual-heritage diaspora isn’t a haggle or a cheat, but instead a legacy of the slave trade and the Dutch presence in the Caribbean, the cradle of Dutch wealth, the birth of the modern nation. The World Cup is teaching us about the world here, giving us a map of how those borders were made and reinforced.All of which makes the question of who does or doesn’t sing a song before a football match seem a little by-the-by. Never mind that singing the anthem hasn’t really done much good anyway; every one of the great canonical defeats was accompanied by Tony Adams or similar belting it out on a roasting foreign field.The anthem does, however, lead into the more fun side of the tournament. Are England a better, lighter, more adaptable team now? Englishness was Southgate’s key obsession, to the extent his “where art thou, England?” stuff may have become a limiting factor by the end. Even this week’s pre-tournament message, putting himself centre stage by insisting he doesn’t want to be centre stage, felt a bit like your dear old dying dad passive-aggressively insisting he doesn’t want any flowers when he’s gone. No really, don’t even think about me.Now England have Tuchel, who really doesn’t care and who is in his state of extreme pragmatism probably closer to this generation of players. Premier League hype-derangement aside, England are somewhere between fifth and eighth favourites to win the World Cup, behind France, Spain, Argentina and Portugal and level-ish with the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Morocco and Belgium.They have four very good players: Harry Kane, Declan Rice, Reece James and Jude Bellingham, plus a very reliable tournament goalkeeper. The midfield still lacks the extreme possession-based craft that wins tight knockout games. A semi-final would be a fine achievement. A quarter-final would be par, although even this may involve beating Mexico in Mexico City and Brazil in Miami.One key plus point: the episodic, broken-up nature of play might suit Tuchel’s style, his interest in set pieces, the barked in-game battleship manoeuvres, the gangling arms at the drinks break. Much will depend on how Kane and Bellingham work together, how willing Bellingham is to make runs without the ball, to vacate the spaces where Kane likes to lurk.Best of all, nothing is coming home here, because nothing ever was coming home, because there is nothing to come home. The team reflects the country, in so far as anything can reflect a country. Expectations seem reassuringly room temperature. Perhaps, for once, England may even have a single-track tournament experience, live in the moment, not the Arthurian past, and rise or fall simply on the merits of here and now.

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Portugal have never reached the final and their best performance was in 1966 but this squad can go all the wayWhen it comes to Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo dominates the conversation. There is so much focus on the 41-year-old, who is appearing at his sixth World Cup, that you would be forgiven for not appreciating the talents of his teammates. But they are serious contenders to win their first World Cup. The Opta supercomputer gives only Spain (16.0%), France (12.9%), England (10.8%) and Argentina (10.0%) a greater chance of winning the tournament than Portugal (7.1%).This will be their ninth World Cup and seventh in a row, dating back to the 2002 tournament, which was their first appearance since 1986. You have to go back to 1966 for their best finish. Led by Eusébio they went all the way to the semi-finals, where they lost to eventual winners England, before securing a third-place finish by beating the Soviet Union.In more recent editions, they have disappointed. Their Euro 2016 triumph, for example, was bookended by a group stage exit at the 2014 World Cup and a last-16 departure in 2018. So, will they fare any better now?In Bruno Fernandes, Vitinha, João Neves, Bernardo Silva, Rúben Neves and Samú Costa, Portugal may have the best group of midfielders at the tournament. Fernandes is fresh off his most productive Premier League campaign for Manchester United (nine goals, 21 assists), leading the top flight for chances created (136) and breaking the Premier League record for most assists in a single campaign, edging past Thierry Henry (20 in 2002-03) and Kevin de Bruyne (20 in 2019-20).Fernandes has at times struggled to take that form on to the international stage, but he has gone from strength to strength for his country in recent years. In Portugal’s final World Cup qualifying match, a 9-1 rout of Armenia, he ran the show, scoring a hat-trick and creating eight chances. In Portugal’s last two friendlies – a 2-0 win over the US in April and a 2-1 win against Chile – he was involved in three goals, grabbing two assists against the US before scoring the winner against Chile. He also led Portugal in World Cup qualifying for chances created, with 21, which was 10 more than any other player.Operating behind Fernandes in the midfield is another world-class talent. Vitinha is the beating heart of Paris Saint-Germain, the back-to-back European champions, and he finished third in the most recent Ballon d’Or rankings behind Ousmane Dembélé and Lamine Yamal. The 26-year-old affects the game with and without the ball. He can dictate the tempo and rhythm of a game, slowing it down or speeding it up when necessary – a skill that could prove crucial at this tournament given the heat and humidity.Vitinha provided 11 assists this season across all competitions, with only Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Dembélé providing more for PSG (12). He was named player of the match in the Champions League final after an outstanding performance against Arsenal. He completed the most passes (141), made the most passes in the opposition half (75) and had the most touches (162). Those numbers were consistent with the rest of his season: he completed more passes (5,234) and more passes in the opposition’s half (3,001) than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues.The appointment of Roberto Martínez as head coach in 2023 raised some eyebrows given his underwhelming achievements with a golden generation of Belgium players. But Portugal clearly wanted to move away from the style of his predecessor, Fernando Santos, who delivered the Euro 2016 title with laborious and predictable tactics. The aim has been to become a more fluid, free-flowing team that make better use of their attacking talent and are capable of outscoring opponents.Fast-forward to the present day and Portugal have scored 100 goals under Martínez in 39 matches (2.6 goals per game). In their only other major tournament under him, Euro 2024, Portugal were eliminated by France in the quarter-finals on penalties after a goalless draw. Since then, they have dusted themselves off brilliantly, winning the Nations League for the second time. Their run to that trophy included a 2-1 victory over Germany in the semi-finals and a win on penalties in the final against Spain following a 2-2 draw.In World Cup qualifying, Portugal attempted 25 shots per match, the most of any European nation. They had 8.3 shots on target per match – a tally only bettered by Spain (9.6) and Croatia (8.5). Portugal scored the most goals following a high turnover per match (0.5) and only Belgium (2.5) had more shots resulting from a high turnover per match than them (2.3).Ronaldo scored five goals in qualifying, two more than any other Portugal player, and he had more shots (31), shots on target (12) and xG (5.73) than anyone in the squad. But if they are to perform well at the tournament, the supporting cast in attack will need to step up and contribute. Martínez has also called up João Félix, Trincão, Francisco Conceição, Pedro Neto, Rafael Leão, Gonçalo Guedes and Gonçalo Ramos in attack.In João Félix, they have something of a wildcard who can make the difference in the final third. After several years of turbulence that involved two moves to Chelsea, a loan to Barcelona and a loan to Milan, he is finally high on confidence and performing consistently after his move to Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League.The 26-year-old was recently awarded the player of the season award, pipping Ronaldo in the process, thanks to his 20 goals and 13 assists in 33 league games. If he can continue his good rhythm, he could have a big impact. Portugal have the quality to go far. The question is whether Martínez can harness it.