World Cup 2026 news: England gear up for friendly, Infantino warns LA of ‘happy barbarians’, Messi scores on return – live

News and buildup as World Cup countdown continuesPlayer guide | Bracketology | Wallchart | Mail TomMore on the referee Omar Artan. Morgan Ofori preaches it.So what does Fifa do about a World Cup in which the influence of Donald Trump – a man its leaders so publicly sought to cultivate – begins to affect the very architecture of their showpiece event? What does the organisation’s head, Gianni Infantino, however busy he may be organising absurd baubles for Trump or fighting legal threats from his own predecessor, say or do in moments like this?He does what he is doing: he effectively shrugs and counts the dollars, measures the prestige growth and pretends all is well while the house catches fire. He seeks African expansion while willingly throwing certain nations under the bus for the prestige of a US World Cup. The Fifa he leads chooses complicity over courage.This is the lot of us longsuffering Australian football fans. Football and sleep deprivation walk hand-in-hand in this country. The waking weekend hours are a haze and Mondays are four-coffee days. We gamble so much more on that 90 minutes. A scoreless stalemate takes on new levels of frustration when you know it’s going to leave you functionally impaired for 24 hours.And now, while we Australians find ourselves in a position of relative bliss, the shoe is, of course, very much on the other foot in the UK. This World Cup, held in Canada, Mexico and the US, has given England fans manageable group-stage fixtures. But Scotland fans are being hit with a 2am kick-off, right off the bat. Others are staring down the barrel of midnight and 3am starts. Forty-four of the 104 games are being played between midnight and 5am UK time. Continue reading...