Key events
England are gearing up for their final pre-tournament warmup, against Costa Rica in Orlando, with notes of caution being sounded about Bukayo Saka’s fitness. Thomas Tuchel said that while Saka’s fellow Arsenal late-arrivers Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke were pretty much up to speed, “Bukayo is just not there yet. Some things are missing … consecutive trainings. They took very good care of him [at Arsenal] and were very aware of it and we will do a little bit the same. He is at the moment not able to do every training session through the week and then play. He is still going to be managed”.
David Hytner has the full story:
Preamble
Morning/evening/middle-of-the-night everyone. And welcome to Wednesday’s World Cup liveblog, with around 35 hours to go to the big kick-off. Excited? I kind of am, in spite of myself. Because yesterday was a pretty unedifying day, as some of the fears around the cruel politicisation of the tournament came to fruition, with the fallout from the barring of the Somali referee Omar Artan, members of Iran’s entourage being denied admission to the US and their ticket allocation being seemingly withdrawn, plus the earlier long detention on arrival of the Iraq striker Aymen Hussein. Fifa, normally so insistent on imposing full colonial demands on host countries, has acquiesced with all this.
But never mind, because Fifa overlord Gianni Infantino has been joshing about the US being invaded by friendly “barbarians”. Speaking at the tournament’s star-studded launch shindig in LA, the Fifa president quipped: “You will be invaded. You will be invaded by a horde of barbarians. But it’s happy barbarians, don’t worry.
“Men, women, children, grandparents, doesn’t matter, they will all have their faces colored with the colors of their countries,” he said. “They will just want to enjoy and have fun because that’s what we want to do with the World Cup – we want to unite the world.” Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, back in the real world Argentina beat Iceland 3-0 in Auburn, Alabama, in their final World Cup warmup. Lionel Messi came off the bench in the second half and scored his side’s second goal, from a penalty, as he continues to manage hamstring soreness. Valentin Barco had put Argentina ahead in the eighth minute, and Thiago Almeda wrapped things up with a third four minutes from time. Elsewhere, Iraq’s final tune-up before their Group I campaign begins ended in a 2-0 loss to Venezuela.
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