He’ll move on. He’ll have another chance and he’ll bury it. There was also the best goalkeeper in the world in net that he had to fight past. ”Despite lacking the pedigree of Belgium, Canada held its own and displayed a confident flair and — as its coach, John Herdman, predicted earlier in the week — “a naïveté that’ll work for us and work against us. ”“We’ve got to understand that there’s moments in the game they’re going to be able to take control or they’ll adapt quicker than us as we sort of learn through it, ” he said of his opponent. “But we’ve got this sort of wisdom of never being here before and there’s an element of not fearing what Belgium brings because it’s all new to us.

ETImageCredit... May James/ReutersThe BBC should have spoken out more about Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its human rights record when the country hosted the World Cup in 2018, said Gary Lineker, the broadcaster’s prominent soccer commentator. “I do look back four years ago and feel slightly uncomfortable, ” Mr. Lineker, a former star soccer player for England, said in a BBC interview that aired on Wednesday.

Putin, and the country’s annexation of Crimea, which was condemned globally and prompted the imposing of international sanctions against Moscow. The annexation led to calls for officials from FIFA, world soccer’s global governing body, to reconsider hosting the tournament in Russia, but the body stood by its decision. British ministers and members of the royal family boycotted the 2018 event after a former Russian spy was poisoned on British soil.

On a day that had included yet another warning that status guarantees nothing in the early stages of a World Cup, Spain set about ensuring that it did not go the same way as either Argentina or Germany. Luis Enrique’s team was three goals ahead and out of sight within half an hour, Costa Rica unable to keep track of the intricate, dancing movement of Spain’s impish teenage midfielders, Gavi and Pedri, or the incisive pulses of Dani Olmo, Marcos Asensio and Ferran Torres ahead of them. Rather than relax, though, Spain spent the second half seeking to break whichever records fell in its path. Gavi scored the fifth with a sumptuous volley, the sort that might be placed in a textbook, and became the country’s youngest ever scorer at a World Cup finals; he turned 18 only a little more than eight months ago.

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