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Declan Rice, Elliot Anderson and Jude Bellingham are an elite midfield trio. As strong as anything in world football right now.

Prior to England’s clash with DR Congo, I could not see any way of splitting them up. What £100m player sits on the bench?

One flaw that has persisted over the past few games, however, has threatened to bring Thomas Tuchel’s juggernaut to a shuddering halt, just as it was gathering pace.

Composure on the ball has been conspicuous by its absence in England’s last three matches. With a nation expectant on the grandest stage of all, errant passing can be forgiven on occasion. The issue is, even against supposed lesser nations, England have not been able to exert control over games, limping over the line thanks to late moments of individual brilliance.

There is only one midfielder who has not kicked a ball yet this tournament. Ironically, he is the one who could be the solution to jittery England’s ills.

England’s secret weapon

“Nothing overawes Kobbie,” Gary Riley, a former scout who discovered Kobbie Mainoo as a youngster and has stayed close to him and his family throughout his career, tells The i Paper.

“That’s what makes him so special. It is all well and good having lots of talent, plenty do, but it is his calm temperament, and how he approaches any game the same, whether a youth match or a World Cup final, that sets him apart.”

All his family are here, dad Felix, brother Jordan Mainoo-Hames, of “Free Kobbie Mainoo” T-shirt fame, and others, attending games with their family name emblazoned on the back of England shirts.

Like Mainoo, they are not fazed by his constant omissions. They are having too much fun to be disheartened. There is, however, bewilderment among senior figures at Manchester United over Mainoo’s lack of game time, with even Jordan Henderson coming on ahead of him against Panama.

Nonetheless, it is not too late for Mainoo, who enjoyed a remarkable finish to last season after Ruben Amorim’s departure, to have an impact for England in this tournament.

United supporters will remember Mainoo’s display in front of the glare of the Kop in December 2023, one of his first senior appearances for his boyhood club at the age of 18.

There were fears it was a step too far for one so young, throwing him into the heart of midfield at the home of your greatest rivals, but Mainoo put in a man of the match display that belied his fledgling years. He was so laid back as he sashayed around Anfield that he was almost horizontal.

The ability to move the ball with finesse and guile in the tightest of spaces became his calling card – exactly the trait Tuchel needs right now.

What Mainoo offers

Mainoo can carry the ball in any part of the pitch. He is equally adept at picking passes on the edge of his own box as he is threading intricate through balls into the striker. Rice and Anderson can similarly fulfil such roles, we just have not seen it for the past three matches from either.

Rice is struggling for fitness. He insists his issues are more “pain than an injury”, but he is clearly not firing on all cylinders. At altitude in the Azteca, with the entire nation of Mexico willing you to fail, the Arsenal metronome may not have enough gas in the tank to go toe-to-toe with the resurgent co-hosts.

Read more

• Kat Lucas: Six reasons I fear for England against Mexico
• Kevin Garside: England have their own Michael Olise but he is stuck on the bench

Mainoo is out of match practice, but he always keeps himself in prime physical condition. After barely touching a ball for the first half of last season, he waltzed back into the United side following Michael Carrick’s arrival like a duck taking to water.

“He is so quiet and unassuming that he just doesn’t think about the occasion,” Riley adds. “Anything is in a day’s work. He would love to play in Mexico. Thomas Tuchel has a tough decision, but if he is needed, Kobbie would be ready.”

Tuchel is not afraid of making bold selections. This one might just save him his job and secure England one of their most famous victories. If you want composure in key areas, Kobbie Mainoo’s your man.

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Cristiano Ronaldo had 81 minutes on the pitch and had one touch of the ball in the penalty area. It was a penalty earned by somebody else and he scored it. Goncalo Ramos had nine minutes (plus added time) on the pitch without Ronaldo, had two touches of the ball in the box and scored an exquisite header to win the tie.

This may seem very churlish. In Toronto on Thursday night, Portugal and Croatia produced the best match of a World Cup that is quickly becoming an all-timer. There was almost too much to process: Luka Modric’s swansong, Croatia’s last hurrah, two fractional VAR offsides, a penalty, another late winner and a later equaliser ruled out via Snicko, taken straight from cricket. You can picture the referee telling them to “rock and roll” the replay.

GOAL DISALLOWED

Croatia thought they'd equalised against Portugal to take the match to extra time, but after VAR review, it was disallowed! pic.twitter.com/jlqNHpzp5s

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 3, 2026

But then that is what Ronaldo does. He has the gravitational pull of a small planet and into his orbit is pulled all narrative. And when he spends the vast majority of matches not doing anything close to goal and then his replacement scores a fabulous header, it does beg the question of who really is in charge here.

Ronaldo had two touches in the box in 90 minutes against Colombia, so you see the pattern. Against lower-ranking nations, just like in the lower-ranking league in which he thrives, no issue. Against capable defences, he is anonymous for long stretches.

He was awarded the official Man off the Match for this performance. Is this what we are reduced to: pretending that the superstar was the best on the pitch because he’s a superstar not the best on the pitch. Football is brilliant – we don’t need to resort to this subservient nonsense to individuals.

Perhaps this is just the classic latent threat, the coiled spring waiting for one moment. The only slight problem with that: a magnificent Portugal squad, as good as anyone in the world in depth and breadth of talent, might be out before the spring leaps.

The perfect quandary, then. The eternal fight to distinguish where the line between old guard ends and just old starts. The centre forward who is de facto player-manager for all the control he exerts. And what that says about the lack of courage of his manager.

When Ronaldo was finally substituted, he gave a rueful glance around the pitch. Probably just looking for someone to take the armband. But you wouldn’t rule out him asking somebody else to go instead. After 351 unbroken minutes of action, perhaps this is progress of sorts.

Earlier in the tournament, Roberto Martinez reasoned that Ronaldo serves a purpose by acting as a lightning rod for defenders who too are drawn into his orbit, thus creating space for others. Which…OK fine, if you squint a little.

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But that provokes two questions: 1) is this really how Ronaldo sees himself now: great facilitator, selfless conduit for other people to do good football, busying the bouncers while the diminutive midfielders creep past the queue and into the club? 2) that doesn’t really tally with Martinez’s other strategy, in which he says he leaves Ronaldo on because he is one of the great goalscorers.

The great frustration (and you feel it even as a neutral observer let alone a supporter of this team) is that Portugal have the potential to be exquisite. They have a solid defence and one supreme attacking full-back. They have a band of magic central midfielders who trick you into thinking that they are interchangeable until each of them produces their own specific party trick.

They have fine wingers. Rafael Leao was the game’s best player against Croatia. In Bruno Fernandes, they have the best player in the biggest league in the world and a creator who thrives on main character energy. And here he is stymied because someone has been playing Hamlet for 20 years and won’t let go.

Read more

• Kat Lucas: Six reasons I fear for England against Mexico
• Kevin Garside: England have their own Michael Olise but he is stuck on the bench

Is everybody not sick of this? Have we not seen enough evidence now? At Euro 2024, Ronaldo didn’t score from open play and Portugal didn’t score a knockout goal. At the 2022 World Cup, Ronaldo failed to score from open play at the tournament, eventually got dropped and Ramos promptly scored a hat-trick. And still the dance continues and the out-of-tune music plays on.

Portugal play Spain in the last-16. They will need to be better. They will need to be a team. They cannot to allow their national team’s performance at a major tournament to become subservient to one man’s retirement lap. They need to work out what matters, not who. They need a manager, not a lapdog. Ronaldo will start, presumably. Because none of the above seems to matter. And we might as well work backwards from there.

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NEW YORK – “F***ing Fifa – I get so angry when it’s all corrupted. The World Cup is about meeting people but now the tickets go up and up – I feel sorry for those people who paid.”

In the shade of the Rockefeller Center, this Swedish fan decked head-to-toe in yellow and blue knows he is an exception to the rule. He is one of the few supporters who won a ballot for $50 tickets, with free travel thrown in. It is one of a number of schemes from the office of Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s ubiquitous mayor, to combat Fifa greed at this tournament.

Across the United States, the World Cup faces an uneasy moment. In other host cities, including in Boston just along the coast, there is a feeling the party is wrapping up already. Fan zones are closing early due to high running costs, even with matches still to be played nearby.

In New York and New Jersey the best is still to come – on 19 July MetLife Stadium will host the final. Mamdani has already announced plans for a free watch party in Central Park, alongside fan zones in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, where all the tickets are free.

A French supporter I meet has just paid upwards of $800 for a seat in the lower bowl for the round of 32. “They should have it in Europe all the time,” he insists. “Everything is too much here – even you buy a sandwich, why is there six pieces of ham? It’s too much.”

Ticket-gouging is not unique to the US – it is Fifa who set the prices – but Donald Trump’s administration has done little to fight back. On the contrary, the President has a blossoming relationship with Fifa counterpart Gianni Infantino. They take snaps together in the Oval Office.

Long before being awarded the Fifa Peace Prize weeks before launching a bombing campaign on Venezuela, Trump was given 10 tickets, valued at $15,000 (£11,200), to the Club World Cup final.

So far, Trump has been conspicuous by his absence at this summer’s tournament. He did not attend the opening ceremony, opting for other events including a UFC show at the White House. He has not been seen at a single game.

In fact, upon arriving at JFK airport, the first face you are greeted with is Mamdani’s. In the back of New York’s famous yellow taxis, there is footage on a loop shown of him with a ball, performing a rainbow flick.

Even the mayor’s burgeoning power has its limits. He has been unable to stop train companies charging close to $100 (£75) to reach the MetLife Stadium from New York, which he said was partly a “reflection of the host city agreement with Fifa” to avoid running at a loss.

He was a vocal opponent of the decision to ban supporters from taking their own water into stadiums, a policy which was eventually reversed. Across the city, mini-football pitches have been built to offer “soccer clinics” for newcomers to the game.

The other man responsible for keeping the World Cup festival alive is USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino. Victory over Bosnia & Herzegovina means all three host nations – the US, Canada and Mexico – have reached the last-16, unlike in both South Africa and Qatar.

Mamdani has determined that the other point of difference from Qatar will be a drive to promote workers’ rights. Casual workers at this World Cup have been given “Know your Rights” booklets in multiple languages to prevent labour laws being flouted.

Mamdani has called it a “World Cup for everyone”, which is not strictly true – see the banned Somalian referee, the hostility to Iran players, the Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha whose mother missed the performance of his life because of a $15,000 bond imposed on citizens from the island nation. But in New York there is at least a concerted effort to make it so.

“Soccer would not exist without immigrants,” Mamdani said recently.

“Immigrants play and coach the game, work in in the stadiums, fill the stands, and make celebrations like the World Cup possible. Six of the players on the US Men’s National Team are immigrants… And as the world comes to our city, we will stand proudly with our immigrant neighbours.”

Read more

• Kat Lucas: Six reasons I fear for England against Mexico
• Daniel Storey: I’m not convinced by the great Thomas Tuchel myth

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Southampton look set to downgrade the status of their girls’ academy in a move which could impact as many as 40 young female footballers on the south coast.

Parents were informed of the decision earlier this month and the move comes just weeks after Saints missed out on promotion to the Premier League – and a potential pay day of £200m – as a result of the Spygate scandal back in May.

The i Paper understands the move follows a review of the club’s women’s and girls’ programme.

It is likely to result in a reduction of the number of full-time staff and players involved in an academy which has already produced stars such as England’s Lucia Kendall, who left Saints to join Aston Villa last summer.  

“Category One status means you have to have full pathway from under-16s to up under-21s,” says a figure familiar with the decision made by the Southampton hierarchy.

“Dropping down to Category Two means the club doesn’t have to provide for anything except for under-21s. Instead of having a fully-funded academy programme with a full fixture list, they can move to an ETC [Emerging Talent Centre] programme. 

“As I understand it, the restructure will result in Southampton’s under-16s, under-15s and under-14s into that ETC set-up. That will result in a potential drop in the provision of football from 8-12 hours to something like one and a half hours a week.

“In effect, the club are slashing their academy provision. Players won’t get the gym sessions, the sports science provision.

“I can understand it from an economic perspective. In the boys’ academy they can produce players that they can sell for a profit. Then you see someone like Lucia, who came through the club‘s ranks but then leaves for nothing.

“So, it’s an understandable business decision – but it’s certainly not great for those young players who will be impacted.

“Those players will be looking elsewhere right now, but the nearest equivalent provision is probably Brighton. That’s clearly some distance away.”

The club themselves have insisted that the decision isn’t being driven by financial concerns.

“The club remains committed to women’s football and to providing opportunities for female players to develop and progress,” the email reads.

“These changes should not be seen as a step away from the women’s game, but rather an attempt to create a structure that can be supported responsibly and sustainably in the years ahead.

“We recognise this uncertainty may be difficult for players and families, and we are committed to communicating openly and directly with those affected as plans develop further.”

Parents of the players involved have told The i Paper that the timing of the decision has already hindered their daughters’ chances of being able to find an academy place elsewhere.  

“On the ground, my daughter couldn’t have had better coaching, my issue is with the club,” one parent says.

“For the girls that this is impacting, the timing couldn’t have been worse. She was a week away from signing a two year contract. The trials for any other clubs had already happened.

Read more

• Daniel Storey: I’m not convinced by the great Thomas Tuchel myth
• Kevin Garside: England have their own Michael Olise but he is stuck on the bench

“There was no opportunity to do anything else. Some other clubs have stepped in and offered a trial but the amount of players they’ve taken from those trials have understandably been minimal. Most of the girls who are now moving onto a PGA [Pro Game Academy] have had to travel a lot further. 

“Others are dropping back to grassroots football, it may be a high level, but it’s certainly lower than the level they’re playing at now. The emotional impact on this cohort has been huge – and the impact it could have on the next generation of players in this area will be enormous too.”

The move follows a hugely successful season for the club’s academy, with the Under-14s winning the PGA Trophy for the first time, beating Villa in the final.

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At this point Aston Villa and Newcastle United supporters are shouting at the clouds, knowing complaints about a broken system laughing in their face are futile.

The Magpies specifically are being pickpocketed in plain sight, a club with the richest owners in world football selling to a team who have finished 17th in back-to-back seasons.

“Cry more” is the Big Six response, for it is easy to laugh from this position. As in The Sims, the ladder has been removed from the swimming pool, and the powers above are watching those below them tread water.

It is now five years since the Saudi Arabia-backed takeover and Newcastle remain far behind Tottenham Hotspur in the pecking order because the restraints in place may never allow them to get ahead.

At this rate, Newcastle are even going backwards. Sandro Tonali joining Tottenham after Anthony Gordon departed for Barcelona means £169m to reinvest, but it will be be difficult to attract players who view joining them as anything but a stepping stone to bigger things – or even Tottenham.

That Tonali was desperate to join the north London club, as The i Paper reported, is a damning indictment on the Newcastle project, which has stalled on the pitch and is struggling off it.

A horrendous summer transfer window last year did not help, but going into a new season fishing for Gordon and Tonali replacements is a sorry starting point for a club with ambitions of winning the Premier League by 2030.

And while Spurs take their summer spend north of £230m – having also signed Mateus Fernandes for £85m from West Ham and Jan Paul van Hecke for £52m from Brighton – recent rule changes and fines suggest both Newcastle and Villa cannot spend anywhere near as freely.

Uefa fined Newcastle £5.2m for breaching its financial rules, while Villa were fined £19.4m, with £12.9m of that amount suspended provided they decrease their squad cost ratio (SCR) going forward.

SCR is the new three-letter acronym for Newcastle and Villa fans to roll their eyes at in the Premier League, as it is replacing profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).

It also explains Spurs’ ability to dig deep into their pockets. “They’ll be outspending, you’d imagine, every team from at least eighth down,” football finance expert Rob Wilson, professor of applied sport finance at the University Campus of Football Business, told The i Paper this week.

Wilson also said in May that Villa are not as desperate to sell as they have been in recent years, but there is no chance, like Spurs, of them spending £100m on one player – let alone £177m on two.

All this despite, in the last three seasons, Villa picking up 199 league points, the fourth-most, while Newcastle are sixth with 175 and Tottenham are down in 13th with 145.

Flip that around for net spend since 2023-24, where Spurs top the lot, their £528m ahead of the other Big Six clubs while Newcastle are 11th (£110m) and Villa, remarkably, are down in 21st (£14m).

Villa have therefore won 54 more points and spent £415m less on incomings than Tottenham in the last three years.

In that time West Ham, Brighton and Nottingham Forest are also among the clubs to have spent more on players than Villa, who continue to fight in the face of these restraints thanks to head coach Unai Emery.

Read more

• Kat Lucas: How Tottenham afforded £177m Tonali and Fernandes – and their transfer plans now
• Mark Douglas: Newcastle will reinvest £100m Tonali cash – with one deal agreed and two targets

Another Champions League campaign awaits, too, but the sense they have reached their ceiling under the Spaniard – especially after finally ending their trophy drought in Istanbul – is difficult to shake given they have been flying close to the sun for three-and-a-half seasons.

A drastic drop-off would be a surprise, but sustaining this level is difficult. In Emery they trust, but losing Morgan Rogers – whom they want £130m for this summer – would put them in a similar situation to Newcastle.

And whether it is this summer, next summer, or the summers to follow, the Big Six will only continue to poach from those below them even if they are above them. That is just how it works now. Newcastle and Villa know their place, and are at pains to fight it.

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NEW YORK – The kindest interpretation is that some of the chaos is by design. The late goals, the introduction of the “finishers”, the fact that England remain in the World Cup only by virtue of Harry Kane’s greatest performance at a major tournament.

Beyond that, the prognosis has been bleak. Long before Thomas Tuchel, Gareth Southgate often trod the line between being able to identify their problems and address them – but not all of them can be traced back to Tuchel and not all of them can be easily fixed.

The right

Noni Madueke’s end product will continue to be scrutinised. The bigger problem is that he is largely doing what he is supposed to be doing in this system – rolling it back to Djed Spence. England are both predicable and fragile down the right, but it is not going to be rectified because 1. Tuchel has left Trent Alexander-Arnold at home, 2. In Reece James and Tino Livramento he picked two right-backs who were predictably going to get injured and 3. Bukayo Saka can come on but he is not fully fit either.

It is one thing to revel in the power of the substitutes but they have largely masked where England have got it wrong in the first place.

The Pickford problem

The good news, on paper: Mexico have two main attacking threats – one, a forward from the Saudi Pro League and the other, a Championship striker. Julian Quinones is their top scorer with Raul Jimenez close behind. The worse news: at a tournament when Jordan Pickford has had two sub-par performances out of four, Jimenez has scored more goals against the Everton goalkeeper than anyone else in Europe.

The centre-backs

Nico O’Reilly is arguably the biggest victim of how unsettled the back four looks, not least because his development at Manchester City has been crying out for stability to prevent him roaming into the middle.

Whether or not O’Reilly still fancies himself as a No 8, he is too easily being dragged into trouble by Ezri Konsa and Marc Guehi. They can count themselves very lucky that Yoane Wissa was guilty of such an egregious miss.

The approach

There was no real contingency plan for those moments from DR Congo because all the expectation was that they would follow the examples of Ghana and Panama. Congo’s shift to four at the back – not dissimilar to how Mexico should set up – completely threw Tuchel for an hour and all but snuffed out any hope of England pressing to any effect.

What to do about Rice

The safe option – which instinctively feels like Tuchel’s most likely one – is to leave the midfield pairing of Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson alone. In the round of 32 Anderson had more touches than any other player (90), played 10 passes into the final third and created three chances – Rice created two big chances of his own.

The opportunity cost is that Kobbie Mainoo – on his day, just as composed in tight spaces – has not played a single minute at this World Cup and there is always the risk England revert to the staleness of Ghana and Panama. The other obvious move is to use Rice at right-back – that is not a viable solution either, judging by how Arsenal botched that experiment when he was very briefly deployed there during their title run-in.

Read more

• Pete Hall: If only England had 11 men like Harry Kane
• Daniel Storey: In a World Cup that has fleeced fans, one stadium stands apart

The altitude

Aside from the heat (mid 20s), Mexico’s Estadio Azteca sits 7,220 ft above sea level. As far as the players are concerned, Kane said: “My understanding is that we can’t adapt.”

The conditions are so severe they have even affected the movement and swerve of the ball. The body, exercising with so little oxygen, increases breathing and heart rates, leading to dizziness, tiredness and nausea. Ten of Mexico’s 26-man squad play in the country’s domestic league.

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ATLANTA — Three Lions at full-time. Harry Kane embraced by teammates and manager. Thousands and thoussands of England supporters, beery and dancing thousands and thousands of miles from home. Squint and wince a little and you can just about persuade yourself that it was designed this way. The first bars of Wonderwall sound out and the lump in your throat comes out to play.

England fight, crawl, force their way on. Somehow, some way. And by some way, we mean: Harry Kane is the best English striker of all time and the best striker in the world right now. England are the Kane team because their captain is magnificent and this is increasingly the World Cup of superstar attackers.

England are also having to be the Harry Kane team because their manager has us all in a muddle. The result may be king in major tournaments, but my goodness it is just as well because England are a mess on most levels. We wrote after the group stage that we couldn’t tell if this team is good or not. Anyone got better answers?

There was a period in the first half, shortly after a fourth England player in 10 minutes had passed the ball straight out of play, when I looked down at my notes. The general gist was this: the defence looked alarmingly fragile and Jordan Pickford seemed spooked by it. The attack was non-existent because the wingers were offering nothing. And the entire team seemed devoid of belief. But apart from that…

The generous spin is that this is merely more of the same but change is coming. Enlarge the World Cup to 48 teams and the first knockout match becomes an extension of the groups. DR Congo played roughly the same role as Ghana and Panama but actually took advantage of their counter-attack. England struggled to break a team down until they did. Call it a five-team group and England have topped it.

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Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.

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And the pervading narrative of England’s tournament is that they will be better when they face better opposition. That would have been the great tragedy of losing to DR Congo: not getting to see English attackers inevitably making hay and taking liberties in all that space in behind that elite opponents would definitely give us for a laugh.

As you can tell, I’m not convinced. This notion that England are a coiled spring waiting for space and time and freedom is a fun one – and at least slightly reassuring – but watching this defence against the best attacking players in the world should be enough to make you feel sick. In an open contest England may well create more from open play. The full-backs are also a mess because Tuchel went weird with his selection and Ezri Konsa looks jumpy.

The last manager protected an average defence that was the weak point of the team and England became boring to the point of fault. It went too far. Tuchel is ostensibly doing mostly the same but without the defensive protection bit. England are ragged in their own half and compact in the opposition’s. It is an odd, unattractive mix.

The obvious retort lies within that criticism: this is just what Southgate did. And… maybe. But this was supposed to be the start of a new era during which added an elite winner to the pile of goodwill Southgate had banked. Instead, this has been a mash up of 2022 and 2024. It doesn’t feel different yet despite so much having changed. That’s hard to process and harder to trust.

Read more

• Pete Hall in Atlanta: England would be a shambles without Harry Kane
• Daniel Storey: In a World Cup that has fleeced fans, one stadium stands apart

It is at least still working, just about, because Kane is brilliant and because England’s substitute wingers are better than every other country, particularly true while Bukayo Saka can’t start. If nothing else it’s nice to have wide players crossing with their stronger feet. Anthony Gordon got two assists.

So we can save the worst of the opprobrium for now. Let’s hope that it is never needed. But England now face Mexico in Mexico: far harder, far more altitude, far better opponent, far more febrile atmosphere.

If the theory holds, England will be better against better. The worry from Atlanta that won’t leave this brain: what if better are better against us and we’re already living on the edge of incompetence?

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