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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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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.

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From Sparwasser being the toast of East Germany to Cameroon’s rumbling of Argentina, the finals are littered with upsetsCape Verde’s stunning draw against Spain produced some incredible statistics. The Spaniards had 27 attempts on the goal of the 40-year-old Vozinha and completed 734 passes compared with Cape Verde’s 205. It was an unbelievable rearguard action from a side ranked 61 places below their opponents, who had just named the oldest starting XI of the tournament with an average age north of 31 years.It will no doubt enter World Cup lore as one of the greatest displays of dogged defending the competition has seen. To celebrate, here is a look back at some of those magic moments when underdogs truly had their day.In the only competitive fixture played between the football federations of a Germany divided by the cold war, East Germany embarrassed their hosts in Hamburg. A Jürgen Sparwasser goal ensured both teams progressed to the next group stage, with West Germany going on to become world champions.Cuba arrived in France with a skeleton squad of 15 players, but shocked the world by reaching the quarter-finals. After drawing 3-3 with Romania, they won a second match between the sides 2-1. Incredibly, Cuba’s first-choice goalkeeper, Benito Carvajales, opted not to play in the replay because he had received a lucrative offer to do radio commentary on the match instead. Sweden ended their dream with an 8-0 thumping in the next round.In their first appearance at the tournament since 1958, Northern Ireland faced the hosts, Spain, in Valencia needing a win to progress. Step forward Gerry Armstrong, who smashed home the winner after Luis Arconada could only parry a Billy Hamilton cross. After Mal Donaghy was dismissed, Billy Bingham’s 10 men held on. After a draw against Austria in the second group stage, defeat to France sent Northern Ireland home.When South Africa were banned and South Korea withdrew, North Korea were left with the task of beating Australia to qualify for the finals, setting up a historic moment at Ayresome Park. Pak Doo-ik’s goal defeated a star-studded Italy, sending the Azzurri home to a reception where they were reportedly pelted with tomatoes. North Korea progressed to the quarter-finals and even took a shock 3-0 lead against Eusébio’s Portugal before sliding to a 5-3 defeat.Morocco became the first African side to top a World Cup group and reach the knockout rounds in Mexico. Considered heavy underdogs in a brutal group featuring England, Poland and Portugal, Morocco eked out goalless draws against the first two. They then secured a historic 3-1 triumph over the Portuguese to book a second-round match with West Germany, which they narrowly lost 1-0 to a late Lothar Matthäus free-kick.France entered the tournament as reigning world and European champions, boasting a glittering squad. Senegal, who gained independence from France in 1960, were making their World Cup debut and featured a squad almost entirely based in the French leagues. Papa Bouba Diop scored the only goal after 30 minutes. Senegal marched all the way to the quarter-finals, while the French squad spectacularly imploded, finishing bottom of the group without scoring a goal.Goals from Rabah Madjer and Lakhdar Belloumi ensured Algeria became the first African side to beat a European team at a World Cup finals. Unfortunately, because final group matches were not played simultaneously, West Germany and Austria were later able to manufacture a mutually beneficial 1-0 German win in the “Disgrace of Gijón” that sent both European teams through at Algeria’s expense, despite them also beating Chile.Legend has it that when the score was transmitted back to newspapers in London from Brazil, editors assumed the score was a transcription error. It wasn’t. The Haiti-born forward Joe Gaetjens scored the only goal for an American team made up mostly of part-timers. England’s first foray into the World Cup ended in humiliation and they went home chastened after defeat to Spain.Argentina arrived in Qatar on a 36-game unbeaten run. When Lionel Messi opened the scoring from the penalty spot after 10 minutes, a comfortable afternoon seemed in the offing. Saleh al-Shehri and Salem al-Dawsari had other ideas, Argentina had three goals disallowed for offside in the space of 13 minutes and the greatest comeback in Saudi Arabia football history was made. Argentina went on to lift the trophy, while defeats to Poland and Mexico meant the Saudis did not reach the knock-out stage.The upset to end all upsets. It wasn’t just that Argentina were world champions. It wasn’t just that expectations of African sides were low at the time. It wasn’t just that it was Cameroon’s fourth match at a World Cup finals. It was that Cameroon were already down to 10 men when François Omam-Biyik netted and were reduced to nine men after Benjamin Massing took a somewhat agricultural approach to defending the lead. There was nothing Diego Maradona could do about it.

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Dublin-born defender’s display against Spain drew comparisons with Paul McGrath’s against Italy in 1994 but he says there is still room to improveRucksack on his back, Roberto “Pico” Lopes was standing on the corner of the narrow walkway way below the stands at the Atlanta stadium on Monday afternoon when the last of Spain’s players tried to make their way home. More than an hour after the final whistle had gone and they still couldn’t get past him, someone quipped. The centre-back from Crumlin reckoned he was “rusty” too here, yet he was at the heart of the greatest moment in Cape Verde’s history, one his coach claimed went far beyond football, and the kind of story only the World Cup can write.It had taken a little while and a word or two to realise it. In the final minute when Spain had their 11th and last corner, Lopes had looked at the clock and seen that it was close. He had heard the final whistle go, heard the roar as it was confirmed that Cape Verde had held on, undefeated on their tournament debut. He had seen the tears and celebration, family and friends in the stands, As he went down the tunnel he encountered Ray Houghton, scorer of the goal in New York when the Republic of Ireland defeated Italy 32 years ago, and embraced him. It was, he said, “lovely”, but what all this meant hadn’t entirely sunk in yet.“You’re still in that moment: ‘A point, is it good?’ That’s just the way I am after games: I pick over the bones,” Lopes said. “[Ray] put it into perspective: ‘It’s a point at the World Cup against Spain’. Sometimes you have to allow yourself to enjoy it. Yeah, we can play better – we will probably have opportunities to show that in the next two games – but it’s a clean sheet against one of the best teams in the world.”That helped; then came the FaceTime call with his Shamrock Rovers teammates, which meant Lopes took a while to appear in the mixed zone to speak to the media, for which he apologised. He arrived wearing a pin badge pinned to his chest of the Irish and Cape Verde flags crossed – a gift from the country’s ambassador in Lisbon. “I think in the dressing room it hit me just what we have achieved here,” he said, and what they had achieved is astonishing. A point, is it good? It is unbelievable.In their first ever game at the World Cup, the Atlantic archipelago with a population of 600,000 had held the European champions and tournament favourites ranked 65 places higher than them. Never had a gap this big ended in anything other than defeat. Everything about this was extraordinary. Cape Verde’s goalkeeper, Vozinha, is 40 and yet made seven saves, crying afterwards because his mother couldn’t afford the visa bond to come. Their all-time top scorer, Ryan Mendes, making his 99th appearance, is playing in the second division in Turkey. The starting striker, Dailon Livramento, hasn’t scored a club goal in almost two years. And the midfielder who replaced Laros Duarte in the second half is his brother Deroy.Few though have captured the imagination quite like Lopes, a one-time mortgage adviser who didn’t turn pro until he was 24 and didn’t get an international call until he was 28. Lopes was born and raised in Dublin. His dad, Carlos, was a cruise ship chef from Cape Verde whose boat docked in the city, where he met Judy, Lopes’s mother. His 98-year-old grandad still works the land in São Nicolau, one of the 10 islands. That made him eligible for an international call up, which didn’t mean he ever imagined it. When it came, it was via LinkedIn and at the second attempt – the first time, Lopes had assumed it was spam. He is the first League of Ireland player to reach the World Cup at all, let alone start it like this.It started with history made, and the kind of performance that had some likening him to Paul McGrath at Giants Stadium. “I don’t think it was that good,” Lopes insisted. “Look, I’m probably a bit rusty: that’s my first 90 minutes since April, so I was happy to get it under my belt.“At half-time we just said, ‘Good first half,’ because we came in at nil-all but there was still a big job to be done. It’s never over until it’s over: if you start putting your feet up at 90 minutes, that’s where things can change. The last corner they had, I glanced up at the stopwatch. I think there was 30 seconds left and I was just screaming: ‘One more, come on, one more’ and that would be it. And I was just hoping that we’d get a head on it or that Vozinha would come and claim it like he has. I knew if we didn’t concede then, that could be it.”“We probably wanted to be a bit better on the ball but sometimes you have to take that and you have to suffer and we got rewards in the end,” Lopes continued. “It’s amazing, to get a point and a clean sheet in our first game at a World Cup and against a team like Spain; it’s something we should be proud of and enjoy. It’s history for us.” Vindication, too. If there have been complaints about the expanded format, this said something about the competitive credentials of countries too easily dismissed as unworthy. Cape Verde’s starting XI had players from eight different leagues – those of England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France are not among them. Now here they were on the biggest stage and proving they are worthy, the competition a better place for their presence.“I think this has given an opportunity for every nation to have a crack at the World Cup,” Lopes said. “And things don’t change: teams are [still] here on merit. Just because there are 48 teams here, you still have to qualify. You look at some of the great names that aren’t here, it just goes to show you that it is still a hard path. It is still notoriously difficult to qualify from Africa. If it’s 32 teams or 48 teams or 64 you have to get here on merit, you have to earn it.“I’m immensely proud: we have some great players in our league and to represent the League of Ireland is huge for me. I have played my whole career there. I started out part-time, then I became full-time. I was chatting to the lads from Shamrock Rovers: a lot of them went out to watch the game and to see the people you lock heads with every day, that really push you ever day and support you, means the most. They’re so happy, they’re so happy, they’re so proud. It feels a bit weird because normally they give me a bit of stick … I am sure that will come as well.”“It is hard to sum up in words, but for me it is just a story of never giving up,” Lopes said as his teammates arrived, Duarte carrying a giant speaker on wheels, music blasting out. “My first international game was at 28, I will be 34 in two days and I will probably feel every bit of that now after today, and I have played in my first World Cup. Dream, believe, work hard, and anything you love can happen.”

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Luciana Alvarengue likes to think she had the smallest of influences on two of her old pupils as they take aim at another World CupFor all Argentinians, sitting down to watch the 2022 World Cup final was special – but for Luciana Alvarengue there was additional emotion. In the Argentina side were not one but two players to whom she had taught maths at school: Enzo Fernández and Julián Álvarez.“They are still my students, even if they are no longer in the classroom,” she says. “To see it with my son telling me: ‘Mamá, there are your students’ … that’s really nice.”Alvarengue was 26 when, in 2012, she took a job at the school run by River Plate. The school was housed at Estadio Monumental, which meant lessons would be cancelled if River had a midweek game. Now, though, they have moved to a purpose-built facility a few minutes’ walk from the stadium. The school hall is dominated by six photographs – lvarez, Fernández, Gonzalo Montiel, Exequiel Palacios, Germán Pezzella and Guido Rodríguez: the players who attended the school who were in the 2022 World Cup squad.The school is not just for footballers, or even for sportspeople (River also run teams in a wide variety of other sports, from hockey to chess), but Alvarengue soon realised the role was quite different from anything she had done before. Many of the pupils live in club accommodation, away from their families, and that meant they tended to form closer bonds with their teachers. “The boys would come and give you a kiss when they came to greet you,” she says. “‘Good morning, teacher, good afternoon.’”That was particularly true of Álvarez, who is from Calchín, in the province of Córdoba, seven hours’ drive north-west of Buenos Aires. Away from his family, he needed more emotional support and would regularly give Alvarengue a hug. Álvarez was 12 when she started teaching him, Fernández 11; she taught both up to the age of 14. They were in different school years and very different personalities.“You either love maths or you hate it,” Alvarengue says. “There are no grey areas. Julián was very good at maths. He had a very good way of working in the classroom in general. Enzo was a little more difficult to deal with. There are days when you would say he was more focused on a game, on whether he was going to be selected or not.“When he came into the classroom, Enzo liked to make sounds, banging his pencil case on the table. I remember entering the classroom, and on the left side was Enzo’s place, and he was with his back against the wall, his feet on the other bench, and there were days when he was like: ‘Today I’m going to stay like this.’ Julián was calmer, much more respectful.“In Enzo’s case, he was always thinking about football, what he wanted to do, who they were playing. And about what game was coming next, how he saw it, if they needed to make any changes, if they had to travel – it was 100% football all the time.“I couldn’t start any class without asking him how the weekend went. Julián in the school environment was more focused on saying: ‘I’m at school, I’m going to study.’ But the two were always very positive leaders in the classroom. It was very nice to talk to them because it seemed that you were talking to adults, not children.”That maturity, Alvarengue says, is characteristic of the best players. “It’s their teammates who notice there’s something special about them,” she says. “It’s not that they’re leaders of the group and always end up being captain, but they would tell others that they don’t know how to play. You can see a different discipline in football players. I always say that goalkeepers are extremely disciplined.”That means sacrifice. Alvarengue remembers Álvarez once being upset because he could not go on a camping trip because of his footballing commitments. Athletes were banned from PE lessons at school, but teachers would find themselves constantly having to intervene as impromptu games broke out using a scrunched-up ball of paper or a can as a ball. “We were terrified they would get injured,” Alvarengue says.Fitting education around pupils’ sporting commitments was never easy, which is one of the reasons the school was set up. It is common for pupils to be away for a fortnight or more on tours or for tournaments, but teachers are used to preparing work for them to take with them, and coaches then to supporting them in completing the prescribed exercises. The key is persuading students that education is part of their development as an athlete.“Their head really says: ‘I want to do this, I want to succeed in sport,’” Alvarengue says. “And they don’t understand that education is part of being able to react quickly to a stimulus, to understand a word, to improve their speed to obtain certain things. So we always try to orient the academic part to something that they can see reflected in their training,.In mathematics, for example, we often work on statistics. So: ‘What were your stats? How many games did you play? How many goals did you score?’ They need to see that what we are teaching them really is useful for their sports career.”Fernández in effect quit school at 14 but, acknowledging the importance of education, completed his studies remotely in his late teens while playing for River’s first team.What would the pair have done if they had not made it as footballers? Alvarengue is reluctant to answer, saying she cannot conceive of them doing anything else, but eventually agrees that Álvarez could have done something that required a university education, and been a lawyer or an accountant. And Fernández? “He really liked hitting things,” she says uncertainly. “So, a drummer?”Players are never formed by a single club or one coach, but by a range of influences. As she watched Argentina beat France in the final in Lusail, Alvarengue could reflect that she had played some small part in their triumph. “I can always think that they passed through our classrooms. I hope they took something away.”

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Head coach looked downwards in official Fifa photo‘The picture was taken the way it was taken’The Uruguay head coach Marcelo Bielsa has lived up to his maverick reputation by refusing to cooperate during a bizarre photoshoot for Fifa at the 2026 World Cup.Bielsa – known as El Loco – stared down at the floor, hands in pockets, statuesque, during the obligatory media duty last Wednesday. The 70-year-old hit back at reporters when quizzed about the incident after Uruguay’s 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia on Monday.“I’m not a model,” Bielsa said. “I don’t have to give any explanation, the picture was taken the way it was taken. Should I also explain why I don’t look to the people who are speaking to me at this moment?”Bielsa’s continued his rant even when reporters moved on from the topic: “There is a limit in terms of what we need to explain. If I’m wearing glasses, why am I wearing glasses? You look somebody in the eye, why do you do that? There is nothing wrong about wearing glasses or looking into somebody’s eyes or looking down.”The Getty photographers Michael Regan and Molly Darlington shot portraits of the entire Uruguay team in Cancún, Mexico, on 10 June. They had no trouble getting emotive photos of the Uruguay players, but it is Bielsa’s awkward image that has become one of the first viral pictures of the tournament.The Argentine is well known for being eccentric: during is time as the Leeds United manager he would sit on a plastic bucket to relieve chronic back pain. He also personally paid a £200,000 fine which the club received after spying on Championship rivals.

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A Liverpool fan and an influencer explain what it’s like to be hired for a Truman Show-style experimentWhen Kevin Kotoko heard that he had been selected as one of Fox’s chief World Cup watchers he had no hesitation in accepting. What self-respecting football fan could turn down the opportunity to be paid $50,000 (£37,000) to take in all 104 games at this World Cup, after all?The only issues were that he would have to watch every match in a custom-built viewing cube in the heart of Times Square and let his employers know that he wouldn’t be coming in for work the next day. “I quit my job,” admits Kotoko, a Liverpool fan who is from Florida and was working as a waiter in a restaurant. “I found out on Thursday that I had won the competition and so I told them on Friday that would be my last day!”He is sharing the giant fishbowl for the next six weeks with Austin Franklin after they were selected from thousands of applicants who uploaded videos on social media pitching for the role. Both are expected to “create social media content, record their reactions, and engage with fans” throughout the tournament as part of the deal.According to Franklin, who describes himself as an influencer from Philadelphia, it has been a surreal but enjoyable experience so far.“It has really felt a bit like being on the Truman Show,” Franklin says. “I forget at times that we’re here. I’m watching a game for minutes and then I look over at Kevin and I see people on top of me. It’s like: ‘Oh my God!’ There’s 30 people watching us, watching games, most of the time. It is a weird experience.”Kotoko adds: “We’re trying to stay authentic in the process of the job, I guess. So it’s finding that balance between making sure we’re engaged with the game, but also showcasing what we’re doing.”Their presence in one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares has certainly attracted plenty of interest. One curious onlooker was overheard asking whether they are living in the cube for the whole tournament, while Franklin reveals that the most common question they have been asked is where do they go to the toilet. “I like the idea of finding it,” Franklin says. “That’s kind of fun for me. I’ve got 15 minutes to be, like, ‘all right, let’s see where I can find me a bathroom today.’”There are facilities at the swanky hotel both are staying at around the corner, with food inspired by each participating nation also being served up inside the cube. When the Guardian visited for the opening match of the tournament between Mexico and South Africa, there was a carnival atmosphere outside as the co-hosts swept to a convincing victory and both watchers partied on the streets afterwards.“There was a woman who sat right behind me in one of those chairs for the entire 90 minutes, and I went up to her and said: ‘Thank you so much for your time’,” says Franklin. “I gave her a big hug, and she told me about how she was born in Mexico, moved to New York, and used to watch all the Mexico games with her dad. Her dad passed away a few years ago, so I was like: ‘You’re going to make me cry’. So now I’m like that’s a team that I want to do well. You feel this connection and that’s what the World Cup is all about.”Both have high hopes for the United States too after their excellent start against Paraguay. “I think the expectation is they can get into the quarter-finals at least. Then, who knows?” says Kotoko. “This is our golden generation so I think you should put that pressure on them.”The unprecedented and unrelenting schedule of the expanded 48-team tournament means this will be a marathon and not a sprint. For the next three weeks there are four games every day stretching across three time zones as the group stages continue and both are fully aware of the challenge that schedule will pose.“I think it’s just, like, trying to feed ourselves and making sure that we’re trying to keep the energy up, making sure we’re taking care of ourselves,” says Kotoko, who is also hoping that Ghana can make an impression at this World Cup, having been born there.“I mean, I’m sitting on a couch, watching football. It’s pretty fun,” says Franklin. “There is something about the spirit of the World Cup that takes over. We have pretty much the perfect job.”