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Pau Cubarsí has started every minute of Spain's run to the World Cup final, posted passing accuracy no defender at this tournament has matched, and broken a clean sheet record held by Paolo Maldini. He is 19. Almost nobody is talking about him. When Spain beat France 2-0 in the semi-final, the conversation immediately turned to who had scored. Mikel Merino got both goals. Lamine Yamal made the chance for the second with a pass that skipped through France's defensive line in t

The teams that made it to the final four in the 2026 World Cup had one thing in common: their best players didn't always start. It was a lesson learned the hard way. At some point during the 2026 World Cup knockout rounds, something funny happened to the sport. Goals from substitutes. Matches turned by players who began the game on the bench. Teams that looked ordinary for 60 minutes and dangerous for the final 30. The pattern kept repeating, and by the time the semi-finals

When Florence Pernet was denied accreditation to cover the 2026 World Cup, she photographed matches from her television instead. The images went viral. A footballer deleted his entire Instagram to make room for them. Before the World Cup started, Michael Olise wiped his entire Instagram account clean. Every post is gone. Years of images, celebrations, match photographs all deleted. His 10 million followers immediately started speculating. Transfer move imminent. Unhappy at Ba

Merino's stoppage-time strike sends Spain into the World Cup quarter-finals, ending Cristiano Ronaldo's likely final World Cup campaign in heartbreaking fashion. It was 91 minutes and 23 seconds on the clock when the ball ended up at the feet of Mikel Merino, who was standing at the perimeter of Portugal's penalty box. He had just come into the match five minutes and forty seconds prior. Before him, Torres had just been substituted in a minute before him and made the final p

Michel Kuka Mboladinga has stood motionless at DR Congo matches since 2013, recreating the pose of a statue in Kinshasa. At the 2026 World Cup, he became one of the tournament's most recognisable figures and one of its most contested. The Estadio Akron in Guadalajara, Mexico, was at full volume an hour before kickoff. Drums. Flags the size of garage doors. The particular noise that only a crowd of 46,000 does when it is wound up tight and waiting for something. DR Congo vers