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ORLANDO — Declan Rice knows what you’ve all been saying.

Those pictures England players had taken earlier this week where they are re-enacting their goal celebrations? Rice looked decidedly rosy in his, clearly feeling the effects of the Florida sun.

“I think everyone has seen those pictures, I was bright red in those photos. Honestly, my mum was killing me,” he told reporters after he hit the ground running with a solid display in England’s final World Cup warm-up.

The 3-0 win was a step up from Saturday’s gentle stroll against New Zealand. And perhaps evidence that England are starting to understand the demands of playing in the humid conditions they’ll encounter here in the US.

“The first day that we came, it was just getting used to that heat,” Rice explained.

“Coming from England, where it’s hot-cold, all different types of weather, coming here and it’s always 30 degrees – it really does hit you in the face.”

Rice’s sunburn won’t pose a threat to England’s World Cup chances. But he’s one of four players Thomas Tuchel needs to protect at all costs in the next week if the Three Lions are going to make short work of a potentially taxing Group L.

Declan Rice

How much better do things tick when Rice is here? He’s not just a good personality – universally respected and liked in the England camp – but he’s also a very, very fine midfielder who can provide style as well as a shield.

With three major tournament appearances – including Qatar 2022, when England were dreadfully unlucky to go out to France in the quarter-finals – he also has experience of what is required to succeed in the rarefied World Cup air.

Jude Bellingham

Forget the debate. It was fun for Tuchel to dispatch a few sacred cows last year when he had time on his side and could talk about culture and signing up to England DNA.

But let’s not beat around the bush: sides that win World Cups need a certain swagger and Bellingham provides that for England.

Part of the problem in the World Cup cycle has been that Tuchel’s Three Lions haven’t really been tested. They’ve played well in spells, something that you could say about Wednesday’s solid 3-0 defeat of Costa Rica, but they’ve yet to confront a really decent team under the German.

Unless they come catastrophically unstuck here in America, that will change in the next fortnight or so, and when the challenges arrive, they will need Bellingham.

He had the look of a player arriving in form at the right time in Orlando, showcasing his versatility and ability by occupying the number nine role for periods against Costa Rica. For his goals, his big game mentality and his ability, Bellingham needs to be involved from the start against Croatia.

Harry Kane

Well, who else? Wednesday was a rare example of England winning without their top goalscorer and talisman scoring. It’s no bad thing that others find a way to do what Kane makes look so effortlessly easy.

He’s in the form of his life and – unlike 2024’s anaemic version of a clearly fatigued Kane – there are no debates about whether having a more energetic striker might be a better way forward. It would now be sacrilege to talk about dropping Kane.

Elliot Anderson

An English midfielder that Manchester City – usually pretty sharp recruiters – are willing to pay in excess of £100million for? Where do I sign up?

Anderson’s rise from bit-part player at Newcastle to nailed-on England starter in two years has been quite something.

Leaving St James’ Park has helped him to grow into a player capable of influencing games at the highest level.

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Mexico is preparing to host the biggest and most politicised World Cup in history – unlike its noisy neighbours to the north, above all it is a football nation.

“We have that in the blood,” tourism minister Michelle Fridman tells The i Paper. “Everyone in Mexico just loves football. I would say it’s an integrator of society. We’ll have fun – we’ll celebrate with lots of tequila and mariachi music.”

The tournament is a chance to “show Mexico to the world”. Alongside co-hosts Canada and the United States, Mexico will hold 16 matches across Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City. Over $12bn (£9bn) has been invested.

Yet when it kicks off Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president, will not be there to see it. She has delivered on a promise to give away her ticket to the opening ceremony to an indigenous woman.

Mexico’s national team tend to thrive on home soil – they reached the quarter-finals (their best World Cup run) in both 1970 and 1986, tournaments they hosted. But neither had a backdrop quite like this one.

Mexico’s unlikely co-hosts

The US government has tried to paint a very different picture, one of a dark underbelly in Mexico’s cities which threatened to derail the entire World Cup project. Sheinbaum has repeatedly accused the US of political interference, suggesting American far-right groups are working alongside Mexican counterparts to undermine her administration.

In January, Donald Trump threatened to send troops over the border, purportedly to tackle the cartels. The killing of drug kingpin “El Mencho” in a military operation led to a spate of violence just as Mexico was finalising its preparations to welcome a million visitors.

But that is an unjust depiction, for several reasons. Before a ball has even been kicked, tourism to Mexico is at an all-time high. The US, by contrast, is a global outlier – its own tourism industry experienced a sharp decline in 2025. In Guadalajara, homicide is down by 40 per cent and wider crime by more than 20 per cent.

“I’ve seen how unfair this image of Mexico has been to our country,” Fridman says.

“It’s not a surprise that the United States has been facing, let’s say, a challenging time – whether it’s migration politics that has affected the tourism industry overall, not only with Mexico, but with the rest of the world. There are less tourists arriving to the United States and less tourists leaving the United States.

“What we’ve been doing is to keep saying to the Americans that we’re open to receiving them, we want them. There are many Americans that are still visiting us.”

In the host cities, a party atmosphere has been building. Guadalajara, Fridman describes as “traditionally modern”, keeping its “history, tradition, and traditional food” alive, while evolving into a city ready to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The raicilla – a 400-year-old tropical spirit, second only to tequila for popularity – is flowing. The elephants and capybaras at Jalisco zoo have been asked to predict results by selecting boxes of food bearing different flags. All seemed to believe Mexico will win.

Which World Cup games are in Mexico?

Group stages:

• Mexico vs South Africa – 11 June (Mexico City Stadium)
• South Korea vs Czechia – 11 June (Estadio Guadalajara)
• Sweden vs Tunisia – 14 June (Estadio Monterrey)
• Uzbekistan vs Colombia – 17 June (Mexico City Stadium)
• Mexico vs South Korea – 18 June (Estadio Guadalajara)
• Tunisia vs Japan – 20 June (Estadio Monterrey)
• Colombia vs DR Congo – 23 June (Estadio Guadalajara)
• Czechia vs Mexico – 24 June (Estadio Monterrey)
• Uruguay vs Spain – 26 June (Estadio Guadalajara)

Knockouts:

• Round of 32 – Group F winners vs Group C runners-up – 29 June (Estadio Monterrey)
• Round of 32 – Group A winners vs Group C/E/F/H/I third-place – 30 June (Mexico City Stadium)
• Round of 16 – Winner of Match 79 vs Match 80 – 5 July (Mexico City Stadium)

‘Football is woven into our life’

Mexico arrive at this World Cup on an eight-game unbeaten run, and have an added advantage in temperatures set to soar beyond 32 degrees during matches. In Mexico City, players will have to run in high altitudes 7,300 ft above sea level.

Javier Aguirre, the head coach, is Mexico’s answer to Gareth Southgate, prioritising pragmatism over flair.

“The passion for the game is woven into everyday life here,” Citlalli Medina, a Mexican football expert at Mural, tells The i Paper.

“Aguirre’s greatest strengths as a manager are not necessarily tactical. Instead they lie in his vast experience, leadership and ability to motivate players. He is also uniquely placed to help the squad understand what it means to represent Mexico at a home World Cup, having done so himself during the 1986 tournament.

“There are certainly concerns about the side’s overall performances and style of play. El Tri do not appear to have a clearly established playing identity at the moment, which means they often rely heavily on moments of individual quality rather than a well-defined collective system.”

Mexico are still dependent on Wolves striker Raul Jimenez, now 35. There is, nevertheless, huge excitement over 17-year-old Gilberto Mora of Tijuana, the youngest player at the tournament.

Read more

• Special report: Inside the World Cup police operation – featuring guns, Tasers and pepper spray
• Interview: My British husband was detained by ICE – I fear for England fans in the US

Fifa insists this will be the moment when “three countries and an entire continent” produce “the best and most inclusive World Cup ever”. Along the Texan border, it has not always felt that way, the US military closing airspace over El Paso and investing in lasers to shoot down drones suspected of drug trafficking. Tensions between the US and Mexico are not new but have been inflamed since Trump’s second term began.

In Mexico, the mood is defiant. They have the World Cup’s only beach destinations, some huge knockout games and none of the aggressive searches of players’ luggage that have been witnessed as teams have begun to arrive in the US. However many eyes are trained above the border, Mexico is ready to deliver its share of the bargain.

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INTER & CO STADIUM – After the storm clouds finally cleared, so did the fog of the phony war for Thomas Tuchel.

A week out from the World Cup opener against Croatia and Tuchel’s message was as loud as the thunder that rumbled around downtown Orlando, pushing back the kick-off of this leg loosener against Costa Rica. This, with the exception of the unfortunate Noni Madueke, is England’s team to take on the world.

The big winner in that developing scenario? Barcelona new boy Anthony Gordon, who responded immaculately to Marcus Rashford slamming down the gauntlet at the weekend against New Zealand with a statement of intent of his own.

Rashford had been good in the drudgery of the New Zealand game. But Gordon seems to get the attacking combinations that little bit better than the man he’s replacing at the Nou Camp. In the end that’s probably going to give him the edge when the action gets underway in Dallas next week.

Gordon is that strange case of a player who divides opinion among fans but is almost universally loved by managers. For a player who has just joined Barcelona for the thick end of £70m he didn’t always stand out in Premier League action for Newcastle last year.

But strip away the attritional, physical challenge of getting beyond defenders in the domestic league and he does have a tendency to deliver. A top performer in the Champions League, a World Cup where teams tire in the heat and defenders aren’t quite as well drilled feels like a big opportunity for a player Tuchel loves.

He made England’s opening goal with a trademark burst into the box after just six minutes, squaring for Declan Rice to drive past Patrick Mejias. And he finished the contest off with a well-taken penalty before Tuchel took him off with 20 minutes to go. It felt like job done for the forward.

Given their early pressure the floodgates should have been flung open but for this England side, it’s never that simple.

England predicted XI vs Croatia

Pickford; James, Konsa, Stones, O’Reilly; Anderson, Rice; Saka, Bellingham, Gordon; Kane

They had 80 per cent possession in the Orlando heat but are still searching for cutting edge. Harry Kane forced a fine save with a smart header and then England thought they had a penalty on half-time, only for VAR to intervene and judge the challenge on Gordon to be minimal contact.

Madueke inexplicably missed an open goal, rolling expertly past Meijas only to smack against the post and before the end Morgan Rogers got in on the act, side footing wide with only the goalkeeper to beat. They’re the sort of chances England can’t afford to miss when the serious stuff gets underway but generally this was the best England have played since booking their place at the World Cup.

That comes with a health warning, of course, given the brittle nature of the challenge Costa Rica posed. The second of two games in England’s Florida series, this Orlando jaunt came with all the atmosphere of an afternoon at Disneyland.

Read more

• Kat Lucas: Inside the World Cup police operation – featuring guns, Tasers and pepper spray
• Kevin Garside: Thomas Tuchel has fallen into a classic English trap with Jude Bellingham

No one really knows what a World Cup in the US is going to look like, but I’d suggest they go down a different route from the organisers here, who had deployed two “hypemen” to say things like “Harry Kane has 61 goals in 51 games, you do the math!”

The sizeable visiting England contingent – drawn to Orlando to earn “caps” which ensure tickets for future tournaments – got the tone just about right when they berated one of the gormless MCs as “just a shit Owen Wilson”. Presumably when the proper stuff starts in the States on Friday they’ll assume the crowd has more than a passing acquaintance with the game.

Costa Rica aren’t at the World Cup and this wasn’t their best side. But even so they barely got out of their own half against an England team who looked much closer to the finished article than they had done on Saturday.

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Everton have been ordered to pay £35m in compensation to Burnley in an unprecedented ruling that could have huge ramifications for the Premier League – and potentially Manchester City with a verdict on their 115 charges looming.

Burnley brought a case against Everton after they breached Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) for the 2021-22 season, which resulted in a 10-point deduction (later reduced to six on appeal) in 2023-24. Burnley’s case – centring around the legal principle of “loss of chance” – argued that their relegation in 2022 was a result of Everton gaining an advantage by not sticking to Premier League financial fair play rules.

They claimed for more than £50m in loss of earnings and brought the first of its kind action under Premier League rules. A three-person panel – the same that gave Everton the original 10-point deduction – decided on a £25m compensation order with nearly £10m of accrued interest.

It’s a decision that sets the cat among the pigeons in legal terms, with experts arguing it opens the door for clubs to bring similar legal actions against rivals who have breached rules. In theory clubs who have missed out on European places or titles could also mount similar cases.

Chelsea, who were fined £10m for making undisclosed financial payments, may be liable while clubs will be lining up if City are found guilty in the Premier League’s “case of a century”. Two years after that case was heard, a verdict is still awaited.

Everton reacted with fury to the ruling, confirming they will appeal it and saying it created a “dangerous and unworkable precedent for English football”. They said in a statement the verdict was “fundamentally flawed in both law and fact” and the club’s anger is intensified by the fact the breach covered a four-year period that extended to June 2022. Burnley were relegated in May 2022.

Sources said it was like “effectively deciding the outcome of the match at 80 minutes”.

How a decision was reached

Burnley employed football finance expert Professor Rob Wilson and Will Daniels as expert witnesses to come up with a statistical model that worked out the impact of transfer spending on points accrued. They worked out that Everton “gained” seven points thanks to their £19.5m overspend.

To do that they used historical “ratings” employed by the gambling industry and performed 100,000 simulations of Everton’s results – and worked out Burnley would have survived if they had not overspent.

Everton’s own expert witness Derek Holt disputed those claims but the panel decided the model was convincing – and awarded Burnley compensation of £26m for lost earnings and revenue.

The impact on Everton

Everton were “shocked” and “angered” by the verdict in a case which the club argued last year had little merit. It is the biggest compensation order one club has ever had to pay another and the Toffees have made the strident point that it would have huge potential ramifications for the Premier League if it is not overturned on appeal.

It’s also been noted that the same three-man panel – David Phillips KC, Alan Greenwood and Nick Igoe – that handed down a ten point punishment for the PSR breach delivered this ruling.

The Friedkin family were aware of the case when they completed the takeover and it will have no impact on summer transfer business or future plans for the club or stadium.

“Evertonians can be assured that ownership are focused, with strengthened resolve, on delivering their vision of returning Everton to the top echelon of English football,” they said in a statement.

Why this matters

The Premier League is already awaiting the result of the City case with bated breath – with several clubs who believed they were denied titles and European qualification having instructed legal counsel to act if the club are found guilty. City deny all the charges and say they have compelling evidence to disprove them.

The impact of that would be far-reaching and would see multiple cases like Burnley’s launched.

Everton believe that, on appeal, the punishment will be overturned or reduced. The only thing for certain is that sports lawyers will continue to be busy.

Read more

• Mark Douglas: Inside Everton’s £50m summer transfer plans – with five key targets
• Daniel Storey: I’m disgusted and excited by this World Cup in equal measure

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“Our nation is back – bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,” Donald Trump said in his State of the Union address in February, relying upon that distinct brand of Americana culture: saying how much better everything is than it could be anywhere else. “You’ve seen nothing yet. We are going to do better and better and better.”

The United States is the least obvious major western host of a Fifa men’s World Cup in terms of its football heritage and widespread public interest. It was the most obvious choice for Fifa for every other reason. If you want someone to loudly and blindly trumpet your self-inflated message of bigger, bolder and unbeatable – and Fifa really is – the US in 2026 offers perfect laboratory conditions.

And now the football itself has been dressed specifically for the theme of capitalist mania. After seven straight tournaments with 32 competing nations, appropriate both mathematically and competitively, we have entered the age of 48 and who knows how long they will be able to resist further expansion.

Take every single match from Qatar 2022 and add in the quarter-finals, semi-finals, third-place play-off and final from Russia 2018. That is how many games will be played in this World Cup just to determine which countries make the last 32, which you may recall is what we started with last time. 

It creates a football orgy on an unprecedented scale. Between 13 and 27 June, there will be 68 matches played. That’s almost a fifth of an entire Premier League season in just 15 days. Feeling nice and fresh after that long season, guys? Declan, wake up!

Trump faces his Putin moment

At a diplomatic summit in Helsinki in 2018, Russian president Vladimir Putin reminded the world, with Trump next to him, how much a success his World Cup had been on and off the pitch. And he was right. Hosting the tournament was a projection of an image of Russia, a Potemkin village of new stadiums, free train travel and a fan culture that railed against the warnings of heavy-handed policing and hooliganism. Supporters expressed their surprised delight. The trick worked.

Trump now faces the same scenario with far less control. The midterms come later in 2026 and the world is watching. This is Trump’s best opportunity to display power and capability on a grand scale. He will stand front and centre if the next seven weeks are a success, he will say it is down to him and many people will believe him. Empty seats, surveillance issues, extreme heat, security incidents and the experience of foreign travellers are Trump’s roadblocks.

In Russia and Qatar, the political leaders knew when to say nothing at all – let football be the whole of the truth for a while. Does Trump have that in his locker? He has already told the Iran team that they shouldn’t come to the US and admitted that he wouldn’t pay the prices for games in New York.

And now to someone who has far fewer re-election issues to fret over.

Infantino’s gross betrayal of football

Off the pitch this is broadly a tournament of two men and Gianni Infantino is the other. The 2026 World Cup is so controversial for the manner in which the latter has tied himself to the former beyond Fifa’s statutory requirements.

The awarding of the newly-created Fifa Peace Prize to Trump at the World Cup draw in Washington DC wasn’t just an image burned onto the retinae of sporting politics. It wasn’t simply a gross betrayal of what the world’s governing body is supposed to stand for. It also destroyed the concept of the Potemkin village.

No longer can WorldCupland, that temporary mirage, reasonably exist. The audience is hyper-aware like never before. There is no curtain big enough to draw. Before the geopolitical white noise could be turned down if you wanted; now it’s the backing track to the main event.

My message of hope

Football almost always finds a way. It is one of the great inevitabilities of the sport that however much baggage and bullshit is piled onto the something we considered (wrongly) as pure when we were young, no matter how much it is warped by bad-faith actors, the spectacle itself wins out.

It wins because your cynicism gives way to auto-response memories of World Cups past when the football starts. For that we should be grateful. But it still creates an impossible conundrum: if we enjoy it, they win; if we don’t enjoy it, they still win and we lose out. We are growing ever more powerless, and curbing our own enjoyment gives us no greater power.

Read more

Daniel Storey: Eight outrageous ways fans are being ripped off at the World Cup

Kevin Garside: Thomas Tuchel has fallen into a classic English trap with Jude Bellingham

I hope you can feast upon the football without feeling too uncomfortable; I certainly intend to and I’ll be reporting upon the less pleasant stuff. This is a transition World Cup: the last of the Messi-Ronaldo era and the fight for others to become their heirs, the first of the post-Southgate years for England and all that brings with it, the first tournament of the post-expansion world. If the non-elite nations have bridged the gap it might just be brilliant.

Either way, this promises to be the maddest, baddest World Cup in history: more nations, more matches, more noise, more travel, more money made, more supporters priced out, more politics from those supposed to remain apolitical, more sense that international football has become dystopian. And still it excites me. And still it probably excites you too. Therein lies the riddle, the paradox and the moral dilemma.

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Omar Artan is very good at his job; he deserves to do it wherever he is called. Omar Artan did everything he could to get a diplomatic visa and iron out the issues of access; so too did his home country. Omar Artan was elected to Fifa’s elite refereeing list by world football’s governing body – it has vouched for him.

So the absence of the Somalian referee from the World Cup is a stain on the tournament and the sport. It is a line in the sand, a new low. For all of the relevant human rights issues and geopolitical machinations of Russia and Qatar, all of which drew deserved scrutiny, we never witnessed anything quite like this.

In 2017, Donald Trump’s first presidential term, and subsequent travel bans imposed on mainly Muslim countries, coincided with the 2026 World Cup bidding process. Fifa president Gianni Infantino issued a warning: “Teams who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. That is obvious. It’s obvious when it comes to Fifa competitions, any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup.

“The requirements will be clear. And then each country can make up their decision, whether they want to bid or not based on the requirements.”

It was an unequivocal statement, laid out in black and white. It was also entirely appropriate. You cannot trumpet this as the peak of global sport if limitations imposed upon it reduce its universality. You cannot talk up football’s – and Fifa’s – power to unite and promote peace if a host nation arbitrarily chooses who attends it.

What changed? Certainly Infantino has aligned himself politically with Trump since then, despite Fifa’s own statutes demanding it be apolitical. At worst, the creation and bestowal of a peace prize to an autocratic leader before a major tournament was a nadir for sport governance. At best, it was a strategy to soothe ego and curry favour.

But where are those favours and where has it got Infantino? All the promises, all the insistences that things would work out in the end, have fallen away. Fifa is used to being the only show in town when the World Cup is on. Here, that was never likely to be the status quo.

The solution of allowing Artan to officiate matches in Canada and Mexico, an unideal but permissible end result, doesn’t work. The referee camp, where they train, work together and receive all information ahead of the tournament, is held in Miami, where Artan was barred from entering the United States. No camp, no World Cup. 

But we shouldn’t be begging for half-solutions. The case of Artan undermines everything that came before. The travel bans on supporters are shameful and should have ruled the US out of the running to be World Cup hosts, but were predictable. Barring an official from the biggest month of his career despite him holding a diplomatic visa? Unacceptable, and embarrassing for world football’s governing body.

What is Fifa’s response to these broken promises of free movement? How has Infantino attacked the host nation for disobeying his 2017 stipulation of hosting the tournament?

“Fifa is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr Artan’s status will not be changed at present,” a statement read. “In line with previous Fifa events, a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.”

Ah, well that’s awkward. So although the free movement of supporters, players, staff and officials is necessary or “there is no World Cup”, it turns out that you couldn’t guarantee any of that and there still is a World Cup. 

Almost as if the bidder was able to say whatever it wanted and then do whatever it wanted. We’re through the looking glass. We’re beyond the pale. This should never have been allowed to happen.

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US police have been ramping up preparations for the World Cup, with fans warned officers will be armed with “pepper spray, guns and Tasers” in case of crowd trouble.

The i Paper understands huge numbers of additional police will be drafted in from neighbouring cities for England’s group games in Dallas, Boston and New Jersey. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers will also be present at matches.

Despite relatively low ticket take-up overall, England are taking huge numbers of supporters to the tournament, which will be co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico. There are expected to be over 10,000 travelling fans for each of England’s group matches, with around 3,500 of those attending through the Official Supporters’ Club.

The Football Association is confident of avoiding a repeat of the violent disorder involving England fans that flared up in Marseille in 2016 as they clashed with supporters from Russia, and at the Euro 2020 final at Wembley.

There are currently 2,467 fans in England and Wales who have been issued with football banning orders. It is understood those fans will have to surrender their passports for the period between 1 June and the conclusion of the World Cup to prevent them travelling to the tournament.

The i Paper has been told US police will only use guns in the case of “deadly force”, which comes down to an officer’s “judgement”. All officers will also be issued with body cameras before the tournament kicks off.

“Fans from the UK should expect to see officers wear a belt with a service weapon, a Taser, pepper spray. They do carry what we call ‘OC spray’ – or pepper spray. We don’t generally pull that out unless a situation really, really gets out of hand,” a source said.

“We’ll have a very large police presence in and around the stadiums. Additionally, the stadium itself has its own security force. That’s not law enforcement, but there are going to be a lot of them stationed in every section and every area of the stadium so that if they see something, fans get into fights that start to escalate, they can try to intervene and calm the situation.

“If it gets a little more serious, that’s when we may have to look at filing criminal charges and potentially arresting somebody.”

Police will be mainly be instructed to “take the path of least resistance” before using handcuffs, with stadium security also on hand to eject fans from games if need be.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: I’m driving 7,200 miles to tell the story of a World Cup like no other
• Mark Douglas: My England XI to start the World Cup – with three headaches for Tuchel

Sources close to the police operation in Arlington, Texas, host of England’s first group game against Croatia, said any fans who are prosecuted are likely to face any punishments, including jail, in the US rather than being sent home.

Extra police will also be deployed on an “off-duty” basis to provide cover in case of non-World Cup related emergencies.

The most common offences at this summer’s World Cup are expected to be assault, DWI – driving while intoxicated – and public intoxication.

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