Nov. 26, 2022 coverage of the World Cup

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage. Read about Argentina’s resilient performance here, or scroll through the updates below for more on today’s action.

Argentina has revived its World Cup hopes with a 2-0 victory over Mexico in front of a raucous crowd at Lusail Stadium in Qatar.

The match was scoreless entering the second half, but it was 35-year-old superstar Lionel Messi who made a superb goal in the 64th minute to break the tie.

Enzo Fernández punctuated the victory with a second goal for Argentina just before the end of regulation.

La Albiceleste was humiliated earlier this week when it threw away the lead to lose 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in its opening Group C match, immediately throwing the team’s contention into doubt.

With the victory, Argentina moves into a second place tie with Saudi Arabia in Group C standings. Now it has a chance to decide its fate when the team takes on Poland on Nov. 30. A win can guarantee the team’s advance to the Round of 16.

CNN’s Homero De La Fuente contributed to this report.

Enzo Fernández just scored another goal for Argentina, likely securing the team’s victory in the 87th minute against Mexico.

Lionel Messi just delivered a resounding goal for Argentina in the 64th minute, making the score 1-0 against Mexico in the second half.

The 35-year-old captain, widely considered one of the best players in the world, faced immense pressure entering this match with his country at the bottom of the Group C standings.

Both teams are looking to score in the second half. Let’s see what happens!

Argentina can’t afford a loss in this match after they fell to Saudi Arabia earlier this week, shocking the soccer world.

While a defeat would surely eliminate Lionel Messi’s squad from the tournament, Argentina would have an outside chance at moving on in the case of a tie.

A victory would obviously boost their chances further, but not guarantee them a trip to the knockout stage.

Poland is next up for Argentina on Nov. 30.

Mexico will not have its fate sealed in this game either way.

Win, loss or draw, the Mexican team’s future in the tournament will be determined on Nov. 30 against Saudi Arabia.

Remember: During the group stage, World Cup teams are rewarded three points for a win, one point for a draw and zero points for a loss.

Ties in the standings are broken by goal difference, meaning the total number of goals a team scored minus the number of goals it conceded.

Heading into this match, Poland leads Group C with four points, followed by Saudi Arabia with three points, Mexico with one point and Argentina with zero.

Check out FIFA’s full guide to qualification and elimination scenarios here.

FIFA has launched an investigation against the Football Association of Serbia, after a photo surfaced of a flag inside the team’s locker room depicting the Serbian flag imposed over an outline of the independent country of Kosovo. 

The photo of the flag, reportedly from before Serbia’s World Cup match against Brazil on Thursday, shows the outline of Kosovo, which has been an independent state since 2008, filled in with the flag of Serbia and with the words “No Surrender” superimposed on it.

Kosovo’s Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Hajrulla Çeku called the image “disgraceful” in a tweet, saying it displayed “hateful, xenophobic and genocidal messages towards Kosova” while also exploiting the World Cup platform. 

The world football governing body said the proceedings were opened on the basis of Article 11 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code and Article 4 of the Regulations for the FIFA World Cup 2022, which covers infractions of “offensive gestures, signs or language” and “using a sports event for demonstrations of a non-sporting nature.” 

Çeku and Kosovo’s soccer federation (FFK) filed a formal complaint to FIFA for the “aggressive action of the national team of Serbia.”

“FFK strongly condemns the aggressive action against the Republic of Kosovo shown by Serbia in the ‘Qatar 2022,’” FFK said in a statement on Friday. “The World Cup is an event of joy and unity and should send messages of hope and peace, not messages of hatred. We call FIFA to take action against such actions.” 

The Football Association of Serbia did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. 

More background: Kosovo has been recognized as an independent state by more than 100 countries but not by Serbia or Russia. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, backed by the United States, Britain and most EU member states, but its membership of the United Nations is blocked by Russia, Serbia’s traditional ally.

Serbia, which lost 2-0 to Brazil on Thursday, is next scheduled to play on Monday against Group G opponent Cameroon. 

It’s tied at 0-0 in the match between Argentina and Mexico as we go into halftime.

The game between Argentina and Mexico has started at Lusail Stadium in Qatar.

Lionel Messi and his squad look for a vital win over Mexico after a stunning upset from Saudi Arabia earlier this week.

Argentina

Manager: Lionel Scaloni

Goalkeeper: Damián Martinez

Defenders: Marcos Acuña, Gonzalo Montiel, Nicolás Otamendi, Lisandro Martinez

Midfielders: Rodrigo de Paul, Guido Rodriguez, Ángel Di María, Alexis Mac Allister

Forwards: Lionel Messi, Lautaro Martinez

————————–

Mexico

Manager: Gerardo Martino

Goalkeeper: Guillermo Ochoa

Defenders: Néstor Araujo, Héctor Moreno, César Montes, Jesús Gallardo, Kevin Álvarez

Midfielders: Héctor Herrera, Andrés Guardado, Luis Chávez

Forwards: Alexis Vega, Hirving Lozano

For all the teams playing in the World Cup, click here.

Football — or soccer, depending on your preference — has been around for centuries, with its roots dating back over 2,000 years ago. But it was not until 1863 that England’s Football Association (the FA) cemented the sport’s full name of Association Football when they established the game’s first rules.

Ebenezer Morley spearheaded the idea “that football should have a set of rules in the same way that the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) had them for cricket” … unifying the game under a consistent set of rules and regulations.

The addition of the word “association” was to prevent confusion with other popular forms of football played at that time, most notably rugby football.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of rugger (rugby football) and ‘assoccer’ (association football).
“The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus.”

By the time association football and its round ball made its way across the Atlantic, American Football was already the popular game claiming the name of football.

Unlike association football, American football is a game played mostly with one’s hands and uses an oval ball.

Fast forward to 1974 and the United States Soccer Football Association (USSFA) – the sport’s governing body in the US – distanced itself from the word football by changing its name to the United States Soccer Federation, commonly referred to as the USSF (US Soccer).

By the 1980s, the term soccer became less and less favored by the British as the word to describe the global sport and today is rarely used throughout the United Kingdom and also for much of the world.

French superstar Kylian Mbappé scored two goals to lead the defending FIFA World Cup champions Les Bleus to a 2-1 victory over Denmark on Saturday in Doha, Qatar.

The victory means France will advance to the knockout stage.

Mbappé opened the scoring for France in the 61st minute, burying a cross from Theo Hernandez into the back of the net. After Denmark drew the game level in the 68th minute on a goal from Andreas Christensen, the 23-year-old Mbappé scored his second of the day in the 86th minute to seal the win. 

Saturday’s brace moves Mbappé into a two-way tie with Ecuador’s Enner Valencia (with three goals) in the World Cup Golden Boot race for most goals scored in the tournament.  

The Paris Saint-Germain forward Mbappé joins Brazil’s Pele as the only players to score seven or more World Cup goals before the age of 25. His seven goals also move him into second place, behind Just Fontaine (with 13), on France’s all-time FIFA World Cup scoring list. 

With the victory, Les Bleus become the first team to clinch a berth to the Round of 16 and extend its win streak at the World Cup to a record six straight for the country. 

Soccer’s global governing body has found itself at loggerheads with seven European nations over the threat of sanctions for any player wearing a “OneLove” armband during games.

The eleventh-hour announcement from FIFA has created a rift between the governing body and the seven nations involved, although neither side has emerged free from criticism.

The “OneLove” armband – which features the outline of a heart striped in different colors – was intended to be worn by captains from England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Wales at the World Cup to promote inclusion and display solidarity with people of different genders and sexual identities.

But hours before England captain Harry Kane was scheduled to wear the armband against Iran on Monday, FIFA said any player wearing the armbands would receive a yellow card, putting them in danger of being sent off or banned from a later game in the tournament.

FIFA regulations state that team captains must wear armbands provided by the governing body, even though it said it “supports all legitimate causes, such as ‘OneLove.’”

The debacle has rumbled on as a sideshow to the tournament itself.

While players like Kane didn’t wear the armband, Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Hadja Lahbib did as she talked to FIFA President Gianni Infantino at the World Cup game between Belgium and Canada on Wednesday.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also wore the armband as Infantino sat close by during her country’s 2-1 defeat against Japan.

In a joint statement, the seven European federations said they asked their captains not to wear the “OneLove” armband as they couldn’t “put players in a position where they could face sporting sanctions including bookings.”

But some former players believe it would have been a risk worth taking.

“That would have been a great statement,” said former Republic of Ireland midfielder Roy Keane, speaking as a pundit on ITV. “Do it for the first game, [and] if you get your yellow card, what a message that would have been.”

But others have questioned how much impact the gesture might have in Qatar, a country where sex between men is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison.

“Conversations I’ve had with people from the LGBTQI+ community have already described that messaging as vague and lacking in a real statement in what it’s actually trying to achieve,” Australian midfielder Jackson Irvine told reporters.

One campaign group agrees.

“The ‘OneLove’ armband was nothing more than a token gesture,” Khya Gott, a representative for Pride in Football, told CNN Sport.

“It didn’t make the dramatic statements they wanted it to. Gestures from players are important, and very much needed, but only if they’re done correctly.”

Continue reading here.

Argentina has won the World Cup twice – in 1978 and 1986 – but at Qatar 2022, La Albiceleste wrote its name into the history books in an altogether different way.

According to sports data group Gracenote, Argentina’s 2-1 defeat by Saudi Arabia in their Group C match is the biggest upset in World Cup history.

Led by Lionel Messi, ranked third in the world, unbeaten for three years and among the favorites to win the 2022 tournament, many had expected Argentina to sweep aside Saudi Arabia with 48 places separating the two teams in the world rankings.

All the pre-match talk focused on Messi, one of the world’s greatest-ever players, who is likely playing his last World Cup.

The Argentina captain scored an early penalty to put his side in the lead, but two second-half goals from Saleh Al-Shehri and Salem Al-Dawsari turned the game on its head.

Al-Dawsari’s incredible winner from distance – and subsequent acrobatic celebration – will become one of the defining moments of this World Cup.

According to Gracenote, the previous most surprising World Cup win was USA’s victory against England in 1950, in which the American team had a 9.5% chance of victory.

But Saudi Arabia’s chance of victory on Tuesday was estimated at 8.7%, which means the Green Falcons take over the number one spot.

Gracenote said it uses the company’s “proprietary football ranking system to identify the most shocking upsets over the course of the World Cup’s storied 92 years.”

Read about more of the greatest upsets in tournament history here.

The US Men’s National Team battled to a scoreless draw against England at the World Cup in Qatar on Friday, and both teams can still advance to the knockout stage from Group B with another match to play.

England tops the group with four points, followed by Iran with three, the US with two and Wales with one. (Teams earn 3 points for a win and 1 point for a tie.)

England faces Wales and the United States plays Iran on Tuesday.

The US must beat Iran to advance. It would mark their first victory in Qatar, as they’ve tied twice thus far.

England can advance with at least a draw on Tuesday. They thrashed Iran to start their campaign, winning 6-2.

Polish striker Robert Lewandowski scored at a World Cup for the first time as Poland defeated Saudi Arabia 2-0 on Saturday, keeping its qualification hopes alive in Qatar.

Lewandowski, already Poland’s leading goal-scorer and the third-highest scorer in Champions League history, did not play at the 2014 World Cup after Poland failed to qualify. He did not score at the 2018 tournament, and he also didn’t find the net in his first 2022 match against Mexico.

Overcome by emotion after Saturday’s goal, he slid across the pitch in celebration, where his teammates jumped on top of him as he buried his face in the turf.

It doubled Poland’s lead late in the game, sealing an important victory over the Green Falcons, who were flying high after a shocking win over Argentina.

Poland’s first goal came in the first half, when Lewandowski passed to his teammate Piotr Zielinski, who made no mistake with the finish.

Saudi Arabia missed several opportunities to equalize in the second half before Lewandowski sealed Poland’s win.

What’s next: Poland, who currently sit atop Group C, next face Argentina on Wednesday. Saudia Arabia, currently second in the group, take on Mexico also on Wednesday.

Australia won its first World Cup match since June 2010 on Saturday, defeating Tunisia 1-0 to give itself a chance of qualifying for the knockout stages in Qatar.

A brilliant header from Mitch Duke in the first half proved the difference between the two sides, as Tunisia spurned chance after chance and could not find a way past the stubborn Australian defense.

For both teams seeking to reach the knockout stages from a group containing heavyweights France and Denmark, this was a must-win game.

Tunisia kicked off with the wind at their backs, having secured a 0-0 draw against Denmark in their opening match, while Australia had succumbed 4-1 to defending champion France and needed a win to keep them in the hunt for qualifying.

Australia began the stronger of the two teams, pinning Tunisia in its own half during the opening skirmishes, and the Socceroos took the early lead with an end-to-end goal.

They worked the ball up field, with Craig Goodwin finding space down the left wing and firing a cross into the box which, despite a deflection, found Duke. He leaped into the air to rocket the ball into the goal with a glancing header.

That slender 1-0 lead was all it took — Australia held on for its first win at the World Cup in more than a decade.

Five-time World Cup champion Brazil will be without stars Neymar and Danilo for their next match due to injury, the team announced on Friday.

Brazilian team doctor Rodrigo Lasmar confirmed both players will miss the team’s next match against Switzerland on Monday, but remained hopeful they would play again in the tournament.

“We thought it was important to do an image exam, an MRI so that we had more data on the evolution of the two players,” Lasmar said.

“The scans showed a lateral ligament injury to Neymar’s right ankle along with a small bone swelling. And a medial ligament injury to Danilo’s left ankle,” he said.

“Players remain in treatment. It is very important for us to be very calm, peaceful; this assessment will be carried out daily so that we have information and make the best decisions based on that,” he said.

“We can already say that we will not have the two players for our next game, but they remain in treatment with our objective of trying to recover in time for this competition,” Lasmar added.

Neymar sprained his right ankle in his side’s opening World Cup match — a 2-0 win over Serbia — on Thursday.

Read more.