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The United States beat Australia on Friday to achieve back-to-back World Cup wins Jamie Squire/Getty Images
The Athletic has live coverage of Netherlands vs Sweden at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
On day nine of the World Cup, the United States men’s national team sealed their place in the knockout rounds, when an own goal and an Alex Freeman header was enough for them to beat Australia 2-0 in Seattle without Christian Pulisic, who is nursing an injured calf muscle.
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In the other Group D game between Turkey and Paraguay, Miguel Almiron became the first player to get a red card for covering his mouth when speaking to an opponent, but the South Americans clung on to a 1-0 win that meant that USMNT had officially won Group D, and that Turkey were eliminated from the tournament with a game still to play.
Earlier in the day, Scotland’s fans will probably continue to endear themselves to the people of Massachusetts despite their team falling to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Morocco, Ismael Sabari scoring the only goal in Foxborough.
And Brazil did enough to beat Haiti 3-0 — Vinicius Junior starring and Matheus Cunha scoring twice as the Haitians became the first team to be eliminated from this year’s tournament — as Carlo Ancelotti dropped a big hint about Neymar.
The Athletic will provide daily recaps of the World Cup’s biggest talking points throughout the tournament. This is what happened on Matchday 9…
Group D: USA 2-0 Australia
Group C: Scotland 0-1 Morocco
Group C: Brazil 3-0 Haiti
Group D: Turkey 0-1 Paraguay
The identity of the real, official world champions won’t be known until the World Cup final in New Jersey on July 19.
However, the new unofficial world champions were crowned in Seattle on Friday.
The concept of Unofficial Football World Championship dates back to the 1960s, partly thanks to Scotland fans claiming the title after they beat the actual World Cup winners England in 1967. But it was ‘formalised’ by researchers for a statistics website called RSSSF in the early 2000s.
Another word for the idea is the ‘lineal’ world champions, and it essentially works like a boxing title: if you beat the current holder, you take the title. This stretches all the way back to the very first international match, between Scotland and England in 1872. That ended in a draw, but a year later the English beat the Scots 4-2, and as such were the first Unofficial World Champions.
The line has continued to the current day, and going into this World Cup, the title holders were Turkey. Then they lost their opening game of the tournament to Australia, meaning the Socceroos defended their title on Friday.
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You know how that ended. The USA’s victory over Australia not only added to the growing sense of optimism around this team’s prospects at the World Cup, but meant they took the Unofficial World Championship crown.
How far can they go? Ultimately, they might have to settle for the unofficial title, but the good feeling surrounding Mauricio Pochettino’s team is growing. In fact, it’s arguably going better than anyone could have hoped for the co-hosts, and if they continue to perform well, it can only be a good thing for the tournament in general.
You don’t tend to get surprise winners at the World Cup.
That sort of thing is for the continental championships, where Denmark, Greece and a limited Portugal won the Euros, or Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations, or Qatar won the Asian Cup. Only heavyweights win the World Cup.
And it takes quite a lot for a team to win it for the first time. There has to be something special about those first-time winners, rather than just a newish name bumbling through the tournament and ending up with the trophy. You tend not to get flukes.
The last teams to lift the trophy for the first time were France in 1998, who were the hosts and had a team of generational talents, and Spain in 2010 who had an absurd generation of talent mostly centred around that great Barcelona team. It would have been more surprising if those sides hadn’t won it. Before that, the last team to win the whole thing for the first time was England in 1966.
But is there a first-time winner among the teams at this World Cup? And if so, who’s it likely to be? The logical choices include Portugal (who were unimpressive in drawing with DR Congo), Colombia (who disposed of Uzbekistan easily enough but have sterner tests ahead), and perhaps Croatia or the Netherlands, who have both reached the final before with better teams than they have now, but have fallen short each time.
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Could one of the African teams do it? Senegal look the strongest, but there’s also Morocco, who got to the semi-finals last time, or perhaps Ivory Coast who look very exciting, if nothing else.
And then there’s the U.S., who… well, they couldn’t… could they?
Enough of the established powers look good enough to suggest there won’t be a first-time winner this time, but then again, there’s been a madcap element to this tournament, which suggests it could have some surprises in store for us.
One of the themes of this still nascent World Cup has been how the superstars have stepped up. Lionel Messi scored three. Kylian Mbappe scored twice. So did Erling Haaland. So did Harry Kane. Christian Pulisic, the face of the tournament, was brilliant in the USMNT’s first game, even if he had to watch the second one from the bench. The less said about Cristiano Ronaldo, the better, but he still has at least two more games to do something.
Vinicius Jnr can very much be thrown into that group. He scored a brilliant goal to dig Brazil out of a hole against Morocco, then against the admittedly poor Haiti he scored one, assisted another for Matheus Cunha and forced still another, when his cross-shot was saved and Cunha bundled home the rebound.
This is Vinicius’s team. It has been for a while, but is even more so since Neymar’s role became more peripheral: he’s at this World Cup as a role-model figure and it doesn’t matter enormously how much he plays, whereas Vinicius is at this World Cup to lead the team to winning the thing.
And he’s acting like it now. Despite being the youngest player (at nearly 26) in the Brazil starting XI against Haiti, it was clear who their main man was, who their attacks were built around and who is the most likely to produce something from nothing.
His influence was also evident in a game in which Brazil were not even playing, as Paraguay’s Almiron saw red after a VAR review of him covering his mouth with his hand while appearing to say something to Turkey’s Mert Mulder.
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The sending-off was the first of its kind after the International Football Association Board (IFAB) — the body which sets the rules of the game — changed its laws in April to include players covering their mouths in instances of confrontation being punishable with a red card.
That law came in after Vinicius alleged Benfica midfielder Gianluca Prestianni had racially abused him while covering his mouth with his shirt during a UEFA Champions League match in February. Prestianni denied racially abusing Vinicius and was later hit with a six-game ban, three of which were suspended, after admitting to homophobic conduct.
There has been a sense, as there is with many players who establish themselves as a star at domestic level, that Vinicius has never quite been as good for the national team as he is for Real Madrid. Whether you think that’s an unfair perception or not is up to you, but there looks to be something different about Vinicius at this World Cup.
With Raphinha injured, Neymar feeling his way back and Joao Pedro left out, there’s going to be a lot of onus on Vinicius to deliver. He’s doing just that at the moment.
Sweden were one of the surprise packages of the first round of games, with goals from Viktor Gyokeres and Alexander Isak, plus two brilliant strikes by Yasin Ayari helping them to a 5-1 win over Tunisia. They will face a sterner test against the Netherlands, who will be looking for their first win after being held to a 2-2 draw by Japan in their opener.
The other game in Group F sees something unique, as Herve Renard becomes the first manager to ever come in from the outside and take charge of a World Cup team who were still alive in the tournament. Tunisia’s decision to sack Sabri Lamouchi isn’t unprecedented in World Cup history, but the previous examples have all been when the team in question has already been knocked out. They go into their game against Japan hoping to turn things around and achieve something very unlikely.
Germany ultimately made short work of Curacao in their opener, but they still showed a few defensive frailties which most would think Ivory Coast, with their coterie of thrilling attackers, have a better chance of exploiting.
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Meanwhile, Curacao will have a chance to build on the extraordinary moment they enjoyed against the Germans, when they scored their first goal at the World Cup. They face the iron defence of Ecuador, hoping for their first points at the tournament.
Group F: Netherlands vs Sweden (1pm ET, 6pm BST)
Group E: Germany vs Ivory Coast (4pm ET, 9pm BST)
Group E: Ecuador vs Curacao (8pm ET, 1am Sunday BST)
Group F: Tunisia vs Japan (midnight ET, 5am Sunday BST)
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