England fans cheered wildly as the Three Lions brought home a 4-2 win against Croatia in the group stage of the World Cup.
Celebrations also took place in Zagreb, Croatia, when their country scored two goals against their opponents in Dallas, Texas.
England captain Harry Kane scored two goals in the first half, including from a retaken penalty, rounded out with goals from Jude Bellingham and Marcus Rashford after the interval.
Jude Bellingham has said the external “noise” around his place in the England team may help him find his best form during the World Cup.
One of the main talking points around selection before England’s first group game against Croatia was whether boss Thomas Tuchel would select Real Madrid’s Bellingham or Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers in the number 10 role behind captain Harry Kane.
Bellingham was chosen to start in Dallas and scored England’s crucial third goal just after half-time, with Marcus Rashford adding a fourth late on to complete a 4-2 win.
“For me personally, it was nice to put some of the noise aside and just show my country and my team-mates how committed I am to help us try to win football matches,” the 22-year-old, who is appearing in a fourth consecutive major tournament for England, told BBC Sport.
“To contribute, to help my team and help my country is one of the biggest honours and regardless of the noise outside, that honour doesn’t change for me at all.”
Bellingham conceded that it has been a “bit of a tougher season for me”, with the start of his 2025-26 campaign disrupted by injury, his club side in Spain ending up eight points behind eventual champions Barcelona and his place in the national team under scrutiny.
But Bellingham said he feels “fresh and sharp” heading into the tournament and it was “nice to hear” comments from colleagues such as Jordan Henderson, who said the former Birmingham City and Borussia Dortmund player gives England an “X-factor”.
Asked if he has entered the World Cup with added impetus, Bellingham said: “A little bit – I think I’ve got a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, haven’t I?”
The families of the two Bay Area friends who were killed after a freak wave dragged them out to sea last week opened up about the tragedy as tributes to the two young women poured in.
College students Harshita Nair, 21, and Mahial Sran, 20, both of Fremont, died after a “sneaker wave” pulled them from a keyhole on Panther Beach in Santa Cruz County last Wednesday as dangerous swells battered the coastline.
The pair had made their way through the keyhole in Bonny Doon to sunbathe when the deadly wave sealed off their escape just before sunset, officials said.
Nair was a legal studies major at UC Berkeley set to graduate next year, while Sran was set to earn her degree in public health at San José State University in 2027.
Sran’s teenage brother, Aagman, described his big sister as a nurturing and responsible young woman who cared for him and all the people around her.
“She always took care of whatever needed to be done,” the 17-year-old told The California Post. “She always delivered.”
Aagman noted that Panther Beach is considered treacherous by locals.
“That specific part of the beach is known to be dangerous,” he said.
Both Nair and Sran graduated from Washington High School in Fremont in 2023.
The city’s mayor, Raj Salwan, said their “young lives were filled with promise” in a statement on his Facebook page Tuesday.
“Our Fremont community is heartbroken by the tragic loss,” he wrote. “My deepest condolences are with their families, friends, classmates, and everyone grieving this unimaginable loss.”
Salwan also urged residents to exercise caution at nearby beaches, as the California coast continues to be pounded by powerful southern ocean swells.
“Sneaker waves, strong currents, and rising tides can strike without warning,” Salwan said, adding: “Never turn your back on the ocean.”
Sran was also honored by officials at San Jose State University, where spokesman Michelle Smith McDonald said the “entire SJSU community shares in the grief felt by those who loved and cared for her.”
The death of Nair, who worked at UC Berkeley’s student union, caused “immense sadness” at the university, said spokeswoman Ellen Top.
Nair’s grieving father disputed initial reports that the women were napping when the wave dragged them out to sea, arguing that
“They weren’t sleeping there, because their bags were completely dry,” Ahock Nair told the Post of the victims’ totes, saying that if they had been asleep, the women wouldn’t be napping away from their belongings. “If they were sleeping, their bags would also have gone along with them, or would have been completely wet.”
Nair’s online obituary described her as “a cherished sister, granddaughter, and a treasured friend to so many.”
“In her short but beautiful life, Harshita left an unforgettable mark on everyone fortunate enough to know her,” it read.
The women’s’ recovery marked the fifth water rescue first responders performed over the past month along short stretch of Santa Cruz County coastline, according to Cal Fire spokesman Michael Horn.
Less than 24 hours earlier, a killer wave pulled a five-year-old girl to her death at a beach in Laguna Beach.
Teams from the Iberian Peninsula have struggled early in the 2026 World Cup.
After Spain failed to score against Cape Verde on Monday, Portugal failed to obtain three points in a disappointing 1-1 draw against the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday in Houston.
Portugal’s offense never clicked after a seventh-minute goal by João Neves, and superstar Cristiano Ronaldo was held scoreless for his fifth straight World Cup game.
For the first time, many Portuguese fans wondered why Ronaldo was not substituted off for another striker.
Manager Roberto Martinez gave a simple answer.
“It makes no sense to get the best goal scorer in world football out in a game that you need goals,” Martinez said after the game.
Instead of blaming Ronaldo, the coach pointed to his team’s lack of urgency after going 1-0 up early.
“We started very, very well,” Martinez told reporters. “Our level, our control, the way we got into the penalty area. Scoring the goal — which is normally a moment when the emotion of scoring helps you keep control of the match and try to score a second goal — had the opposite effect.
“Instead, it made us want to keep possession of the ball. We gave Congo the opportunity to reorganize their defensive structure and setup their counterattacks, and we lost a lot of depth. That helped Congo.”
Ronaldo watched his longtime rival and Argentine winger, Lionel Messi, score a hat-trick, tying Miroslav Klose for the most goals in World Cup history with 16, in a win on Tuesday night.
Other star strikers, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland, scored two goals apiece to help their teams win both of their opening matches on Tuesday as well.
But it is not all doom and gloom for Portugal. While it did drop points, with the eight best third-place teams making it to the knockout stage, four points could be all teams need to advance to the round of 32.
The next match for Portugal will be against World Cup debutants Uzbekistan on Tuesday afternoon.
IRVINE, Calif. — Four years ago in Qatar, the U.S. men’s national team, along with every other team at the World Cup, was on a rapid-fire schedule, with games every four days. That had been the norm at a World Cup.
Now, thanks to the expansion from 32 to 48 teams at the competition, the norm has changed. There’s a full week between games during the group stage, and players seem to be in favor.
“I absolutely love it after playing a long season, you know what I mean?” Tyler Adams said. “The last World Cup [being in the winter], it’s not even comparable, because you’re in the middle of your season, you’ve only played 15, 17 games before a World Cup, you’re fully fresh and ready to go. Now I think that the body feels it a bit more coming into the end of a season and into a World Cup where there’s so much more emotion, adrenaline, all these things.”
More recovery time is a particularly relevant benefit for the USMNT at the moment, with Christian Pulisic yet to fully return to training after a left calf injury, but with the club season more demanding than ever, Pulisic isn’t the only one benefiting.
The U.S. didn’t have a full training session for two days after Friday’s match, with regen work Saturday and a full day off Sunday. There’s time to dive into film, to game plan and to hang out with families.
On top of that, the feared downside of a 48-team tournament — a less competitive group stage — hasn’t yet come to pass.
If anything, the 12 teams that earned bids that weren’t available in the past have been largely competitive and even pulled off some upsets.
“I love it, to be honest,” Brenden Aaronson said. “For me, I came off a long season and I know a lot of other guys have too, where you’re playing so many games, so many minutes. So more downtime that you have gives your body time to get ready for the next one, you can do all the little things that you need. It feels like you’re having a week in between games like you are in league and that’s the best thing about it.
“You’re able to actually game plan games, whereas in Qatar, you weren’t really able to do that. You’re able to game plan, train, you don’t have to go really full into it [right away], and I think that’s the biggest part of it. I think that’s gonna help us throughout this tournament.”
Hours after teasing the upcoming release of his bombshell memoir in which he plans to expose alleged wrongdoing in his famous family, Collin Gosselin took to social media to shade his mom, Kate Gosselin.
“I didn’t plan this at all, but coincidentally on the day of the official announcement of my book, it is Colleen’s birthday,” Collin wrote alongside a snapshot with Colleen Conrad — whom his father, Jon Gosselin, dated from 2014 to 2021 before tying the knot with Stephanie Lebo in November.
“She is the strongest woman I know, who stepped in at the toughest part of my life and CHOSE to be a mother to me,” Collin, 22, gushed in the caption.
“Happy birthday to my wonderful, hardworking, passionate, and I could go on… to my real mom ❤️ I love you so much.”
In the comments thread, the former reality TV star wrote, “The love you feel for a mom you were given is incredible. But the love you feel for a mom that CHOSE you is something so powerful. I am so fortunate ❤️ @colleen.conrad122 I love you so much 🫶🏼”
Conrad responded in part, “I’ll always be here for you and you are my son. I love you!”
A rep for Kate, 51, did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment on Wednesday.
The post comes hours after the “Jon & Kate Plus 8” alum teased the release of his memoir, “In the Shadow of Eight,” due to hit shelves in October.
“This is not a story for entertainment, it is a story to instill responsibility in everyone to advocate and speak up against abuse, injustice, and the exploitation of children,” he captioned a montage of photos from his childhood.
“I not only poured my heart into this book for my younger self, but for ALL who have faced unfair and outright heinous acts as children. I am your voice. I stand with you. CG”
The book’s publisher released a synopsis on Wednesday, promising that the memoir will share the “never-before-told story of how [Collin] escaped and found his way back from the dark.”
The publisher also described the book as a “reckoning with the dark side of fame: the systems, the entourage, and the institutions that allowed one boy to be erased.”
The book’s cover features a throwback image of Kate holding her hand over Collin’s mouth.
Kate and ex-husband Jon, 49, also share 22-year-old sextuplets Aaden, Joel, Alexis, Hannah and Leah, and twins Cara and Madelyn, 25.
The famous family rose to fame on the TLC reality show, which morphed into “Kate Plus 8” following the former couple’s divorce in 2009.
Jon was ultimately granted sole custody of Collin, while Hannah eventually moved in with them, as well.
Over the years, Collin has slammed Kate with allegations of “child abuse and child exploitation” — including allegedly being zip-tied and locked in a basement before being institutionalized in 2016 — with Kate consistently denying the claims and defending her decision to place him into a behavioral health facility.
Madelyn publicly backed up her mother, accusing Collin of “physical violence,” which Jon and Collin have denied.
In an August 2025 social media post, Collin seemingly accused his mother of being instrumental in his estrangement from many of his siblings, with Kate cryptically responding to the drama in a social media comment, “he knows why…”
Amid the family feud, Page Six revealed in September that Kate is dating her former bodyguard, Steve Neild, and that the pair “have wedding plans.”
Kate previously denied an affair with Neild in 2009, telling People at the time of the media coverage, “They’re going to keep going, and they’ll make up stuff to connect the dots.”
Collin and Jon swiftly took to social media to blast Kate following the revelation. “Everyone says my dad and I are hung up on my mom. We are not,” Collin wrote via Instagram at the time.
“We have suffered the damage of a narcissist and cried together.”
Collin told Us Weekly on Tuesday that in his memoir, he’s “sharing what was really happening behind the scenes,” and that the memoir is “about truth, survival, resilience and finding my voice after years of being silenced.”
Aaron Glenn learned the hard way that pairing a rookie OC like Tanner Engstrand last season with a project quarterback like Justin Fields was doomed to fail.
OC Frank Reich is no rookie. And Geno Smith is no project. If the pairing works — journeyman quarterback meets journeyman coach — Glenn will likely get to keep his dream job.
Reich can’t wait to make it work.
“It’s hard for me right now to not be overly — what’s the right word? — effusive with praise,” Reich said. “But I am just so impressed by Geno. I cannot express that enough. I know we haven’t played any games yet, we got a long way to go, we got a lot to prove, and everybody’s got a lot to prove.
A former middle school teacher already facing child pornography possession charges was allegedly caught peeking inside a youth hockey team’s locker room during a tournament in Wisconsin on Monday.
Adam Teal was arrested for a second time in less than a year at the Woodman’s Sports and Convention Center in Janesville, Wisconsin on Monday morning.
Teal, 33, was allegedly seen walking into a locker room where several boys were changing. When he was nabbed by police, he admitted to entering the locker room, according to a criminal complaint obtained by WMTV.
He appeared in Rock County court on Tuesday and was slapped with a $25,000 bond on a charge for jumping bail.
Teal is a former sixth-grade teacher at Franklin Middle School in Janesville. He was canned in October 2025 when he was charged with a staggering 10 counts of child pornography possession.
The numbskull educator allegedly walked right into a trap set up by a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
The two chatted on the messaging platform Kik, where the agent posed as a father with an 8-year-old daughter.
Teal openly expressed interest in “incest and young” and even boasted about his sexual attraction to his nieces, which he refrained from acting on because they were “too young,” as alleged in a criminal complaint obtained by WKOW.
He bought into the agent’s cover and asked for pictures of his daughter, then allegedly shared a photo of one of his own students he claimed he took at work, according to the complaint.
“If I had my way I’d have one of them under my desk,” Teal wrote in reference to the picture of his student.
At some point during their chats, Teal shared a photo of his naked wife in the shower and admitted that she didn’t know he captured or sent it, according to the complaint.
Teal was first arrested in early September.
His school placed him on paid administrative leave — until the child pornography charges were formally filed a month later. He was originally arrested on a charge of capturing an intimate representation without consent for the picture of his wife he allegedly shared.
His bond was reduced from $100,000 to $10,000 on March 18, and he was released from custody that same day, WMTV reported.
Teal has a preliminary hearing scheduled for June 22. He also has a calendar call on July 27 for the child pornography case.
The Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Iran hands the terrorist regime the one victory it could never have achieved on the battlefield.
Financial reprieve.
What is so disconcerting is that the Iranian regime has never been as weak in its 47 years of existence as it is now.
American and Israeli strikes severely degraded Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and gutted Iran’s military.
A naval blockade choked its ports, with the Strait of Hormuz slammed shut to Iranian oil sales while the US Navy and Saudi and Emirati pipelines quietly moved millions of barrels per day, keeping oil prices from reaching crisis levels.
The national currency, the rial, went into free fall with inflation in triple digits and massive damage to the country’s economic infrastructure that fed its military.
Tehran came to the negotiating table not from strength but out of its desperation to survive.
The resulting MOU seemingly guarantees its survival and grants it the resources to rebuild.
The agreement includes a 60-day waiver that would allow Iran to immediately resume oil exports, followed by broader relief if a long-term agreement over its nuclear program is reached.
Vice President JD Vance promised “significant sanctions relief” and a path to escort Iran back “into the world economy.”
He insisted that “not a single dollar of American money will go to Iran.”
He’s right. But it’s also beside the point.
The danger was never that American money would flow to Tehran.
The risk is that money that rightly belongs to the Iranian people — tens of billions in oil revenue currently trapped abroad and billions more about to be released in new sales — will be transferred to the jihadist fanatics who are holding the nation and the region hostage.
That distinction is everything.
Before the MOU, Iran sold roughly 90% of its oil to Chinese “teapot” refineries — small, cash-strapped buyers operating on steep discounts.
The oil moves. But the money largely does not.
Because of secondary financial sanctions, Iran’s proceeds pile up in Chinese bank accounts — by various estimates presently between 20 and 50 billion dollars — that Tehran cannot freely repatriate or spend.
The regime claws back scraps through costly, opaque shadow-banking networks.
It cannot, however, bring its earnings home.
That trapped revenue is America’s leverage.
Short of a naval blockade, it is the single most powerful economic lever the United States holds over this regime. And it is irreplaceable.
A narrow waiver for oil already loaded at sea — the kind Treasury issued in March — is modest and fully reversible. The barrels complete their voyage and nothing structural changes.
Waiving banking and transport sanctions is an entirely different proposition.
The result would be the normalization of Iran as a participant in the global economy, through resumed trade, monetary transactions, and the transformation of its shadow networks into legitimate infrastructure.
If the administration tears down these protective walls, it will realize soon enough that rebuilding them — which it will have no choice but to do once the nuclear negotiations inevitably fail — is a titanic task.
Tehran’s stated priority is unlocking an initial $24 billion in frozen funds, with claims to more than $100 billion overall.
Surrendering the financial architecture that keeps these funds frozen before the hard bargaining begins is not a confidence-building measure.
It is squandering your best card.
President Trump well remembers President Obama’s nuclear deal more than a decade ago because he withdrew from it in 2018.
That deal similarly normalized Iran’s oil exports, reopened the revenue pipeline, and enabled the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s military budget to jump some 90% in the first year.
The same windfall turned the Houthi paramilitary in Yemen into a strategic missile force threatening shipping in the Red Sea and funded Hezbollah and Hamas’s deadly capabilities.
It took Trump four full years of a grinding maximum-pressure campaign just to mute the effect of the sanctions waivers issued by the Obama administration — proof of how long it takes to rebuild leverage once it is bargained away.
To avoid a Groundhog Day scenario, relief must be sequenced and conditional, tied to verifiable Iranian performance not goodwill gestures.
Tehran is already selling the MOU to its own people as proof that the punishing strikes executed by the US and Israel this year meant nothing.
Every upfront concession validates that narrative, strengthening the IRGC terrorists who insist that closing waterways and issuing threats pays.
Yet Trump still holds the most powerful non-military lever ever assembled against this regime: The mullahs cannot spend money they cannot repatriate.
Let them work for that privilege.
And if they decline to reach an agreement that guarantees the security of the US and its regional allies — as their revolutionary ideology and hatred of the US and Israel dictates that they must — then the mask will have truly fallen.
Mark Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Miad Maleki is a senior fellow.
A few weeks after their luxurious island wedding in the Bahamas, Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson have bought a plot of land in West Palm Beach, Fla., Page Six has learned.
Sources say the newlyweds picked up a double lot in the Prospect Park neighborhood and plan to build an eight-bedroom home for their family.
Trump has five kids with his first wife, Vanessa, and sources have recently told Page Six that he and Anderson want to have more soon.
Sources note it will have plenty of room for entertaining and hosting political fund-raisers.
Still, Palm Beach snobs may raise their eyebrows at the plans. West Palm, which is on the mainland, is considered a little downmarket compared to Palm Beach proper, which is a barrier island off the coast.
His father, President Donald Trump, of course, owns the famous Mar-a-Lago club on the island.
Sister Ivanka, meanwhile, has a $24 million home with husband Jared Kushner down the coast on Indian Creek Island, also known as the Billionaire Bunker, a little north of Miami.
Brother Eric and his wife, Lara, have a home in Jupiter, to the north.
Anderson is a dyed-in-the-wool Palm Beacher. She was born in the city and attended the Palm Beach Day school.
Don Jr. and his former fiancée, US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, also lived in Jupiter during their relationship.
They bought their place for $9.7 million in 2021, and The Post’s Jennifer Gould reported in January that they had listed it for $30 million.
Don Jr. and Anderson married in an intimate ceremony on a private island in the Bahamas on May 23, in front of approximately 40 people, including his children and siblings. The president did not attend.
Anderson’s family and a few very close friends of the bride were also present.
Reps didn’t comment.
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