If your first thought when seeing the now-viral photo of Lionel Messi bathing Lamine Yamal as an infant is how unbelievable it is that the two will be playing against each other in Sunday's World Cup final, you're not alone; Messi shares the sentiment. "That picture with Lamine, now we are facing in a final after a photo was taken of when he was a baby," Messi told seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady at Fanatics Fest on Friday. "It's just insane." The photo was taken by reelance photographer Joan Monfort during a promotional charity photo shoot nearly two decades ago, when Messi was 20 years old and Yamal was an infant. Nearly 20 years later, the two will face off in the 2026 FIFA World Cup final between Messi's Argentina and Yamal's Spain on Sunday at New York New Jersey Stadium. Messi shares a great admiration for Yamal, who stars for FC Barcelona just as Messi did from 2000 to 2021, but he's hoping that he and his teammates can keep the 19-year-old superstar quiet for one night. "Lamine is truly amazing," Messi said. "I've followed him a lot because he plays for a club I love so much. He has a chance to achieve something historic we're going to try to make sure that doesn't happen this time." Both Messi and Yamal are chasing history. Messi could become the first player to win back-to-back World Cup titles as team captain, while Yamal could become the second-youngest player to win the World Cup final as a starter. The only thing standing in their way? Each other. "We'll try to put on a good match, but I hope he and his team don't put on a good one," Messi said. The 2026 FIFA World Cup final will kick off at 3 p.m. ET on FOX and FOX one.

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US President Donald Trump speaks alongside FIFA chief Gianni Infantino in New York City (Mandel NGAN)To the long list of critics of England's tactics in the World Cup semi-final they lost to Argentina can now be added Donald Trump.The US president on Friday took a gentle swipe at coach Thomas Tuchel's decision to adopt defensive tactics after England took the lead against Argentina on Wednesday.Speaking at a reception in New York alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Trump mentioned England captain Harry Kane, with whom he shared a round of golf in Florida 18 months ago."You have a great player in England, who I played golf with, Harry," Trump said."They perhaps made a mistake when they made him a defensive player. What do I know about soccer?" Trump added."They took the lead and they took their best player and they put him on defence."We got to be a little offensive, right? What doI know about coaching?"England coach Thomas Tuchel was heavilycriticised for withdrawing two forwards and putting on defenders in the last half hour of the game against Argentina, meaning England had to sit back although Kane stayed on the field.Lionel Messi exploited the space and provided the assists that led to the two Argentine goals that sent the South Americans into the final.Tuchel repeated on Friday that he stood by his tactical decisions."No I don't regret my decision. I thought we had become too passive," Tuchel said. "I was trying to help the team."gj/rcw

NEW YORK Aaron Judge is convinced adamant, even that he will return to the Yankees lineup this year. "Definitely," the Yankees captain said on Friday in front of his locker when asked if he would be back before the season is over. "I don't see why I wouldn't." Its one thing for Judge to expect a return. Its another thing entirely for the doctors to give him the clearance. Judge has been sidelined with a fractured rib for the past six weeks. He underwent additional imaging on Wednesday during the All-Star break, but the Yankees are still waiting to find out when he can begin baseball activities. Judge said he recently started feeling "ten times better" than when he first went on the injured list on June 2. So whats the hold up? "That was my big complaint," Judge said. "Well, if I'm feeling better, how about we start moving? But I think they just don't want to start up baseball activities and all this stuff, and all of a sudden we have a setback and push everything back. So they just want to be sure it's healing up the right way so we can get back as soon as we can." Judges fractured rib has healed a little, which he described as "positive news." But it apparently hasnt healed enough to even engage in light exercise. The most physical activity Judge can do right now is lower-body work, including walking on a treadmill on an incline. He tried riding a bike, but he was shut down from participating in that increased level of activity, due to it applying pressure on his ribs. "Oh, it's been the worst," Judge said of how the past six weeks have gone for him. "I want to play. That's why I'm here. That's why I get paid, to play big games for the Yankees. And especially with the team that we have, how special it is, how special this group is, I want to be a part of everything. So it's been tough." All Judge and the Yankees can do is wait. Theyre waiting for the fracture to heal "all the way through," in Judges words. And theyre waiting for Dr. Gregory Pearl, who is a Dallas-based vascular surgeon, to provide a clearer update. The Yankees are also consulting with Dr. Christopher Ahmad, the team physician, but they have been receiving guidance from a wide network of doctors and specialists regarding Judges injury. Judge and the Yankees have indicated that Dr. Pearls opinion on his latest images should determine a plan for when to begin baseball activities. They expected that news to arrive on Friday, before the Yankees took on the Dodgers in the Bronx, or by Saturday, the latest. "He's looked at so many rib injuries," Judge said of Dr. Pearl. "So I think he's the one that's going to say, It looks like it's in a spot to where you can start upper body or baseball activities. Or he's going to say, No, give it a couple more days, give it a week. So that's what we're waiting on. We don't want to prematurely start doing some things that could hurt us in the long run." As far as ramping up whenever he does receive clearance, Judge is eager to completely bypass minor-league rehab games and jump directly back into the Yankees lineup, instead. "I hate rehab games," Judge said. "So I gotta talk to them about all that, because why waste some at-bats in a rehab game? So we'll see. I'm not too sure about that." The Yankees (54-42) were in second place in the AL East when Judge landed on the IL, and 36 games later, theyre in the same position, looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays, to begin the second half of the season. Despite an ugly stretch at the end of June, which included a seven-game losing streak and bizarre series losses to bottom dwellers like the Reds and Twins, New York went into the All-Star break winning five of their last seven games. It helped keep the Yankees within striking distance, three games behind the Rays, of the division title. The real litmus test of what the Yankees can accomplish without their star slugger arrived on Friday, when the Dodgers came to the Bronx for a rematch of the 2024 World Series. Yankees ace Gerrit Cole toed the rubber against Dodgers right-hander Roki Sasaki in the series opener, which was the veterans first time facing Los Angeles since that brutal Game 5 of the 24 Fall Classic. In the fifth inning of Game 5, Cole committed a costly mental error by forgetting to cover first base. The defensive lapse, compounded by errors from Judge and shortstop Anthony Volpe, led to five unearned runs and a 5-0 deficit. Two years later, the Yankees still feel the agony of losing the championship to the Dodgers. "The disappointment of getting to the end and playing for it all and coming up short," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of what comes to mind from that World Series. "Thats one of those things that leads to a scar. Part of our baseball journey, you want to be in a position to be in a World Series and play for it all. And we had that opportunity and fell short. So theres pain and disappointment that comes with that." Its difficult to envision the Yankees reaching another World Series without a healthy Judge, but they still have time on their side to shape a plan of action. How fast Judges fracture can heal will determine what general manager Brian Cashman will do before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. If Judge needs weeks before he can begin ramping up, the Yankees will need more help on offense. There is no Judge-equivalent available on the market, but reinforcements are certainly available. The larger point is that New Yorks window to win a championship with their current core of star veterans is closing. Judge is 34. Cole is turning 36 in September. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who has been limited to just 24 games this season due to a calf strain, is 36 with one more year remaining on his contract. With baseballs Collective Bargaining Agreement expiring in December, which threatens a lockout and missed games in 2027, no one in the industry knows what to expect for next season. Its all the more imperative that, this season, Judge returns to the lineup and steadies the ship as quickly as possible. "I feel good about the fact that he'll be back," Boone said of Judge. "It's just a matter of when."

'I feel like I still haven't processed the fact that we won a national championship,' Betts told CBS Sports

The World Cup is nearly through, and that means times running out for us Americans to parachute in with our scorching hot World Cup takes. (No, youre not getting a precise stoppage clock time. Ever. Stop asking.) Only two matches are left, the championship and the third-place match, and that leads me to my contribution:We need more third-place games in sports.Yes, I know all the reasons against this kind of zombie gameplay. The players dont want to play in them. The fans of each squad are already heartbroken. The England-France match on Saturday is nothing but a brazen money-grab for FIFA, its sponsors and its broadcasters. All valid complaints.Counterpoint: Third-place games are cool. And theyre one more chance to see elite competition in action before the long, cold offseason.Angled properly, a third-place game or match, if you prefer is a way for a beaten-down squad to salvage some measure of pride. You think England supporters wont take a bit of grim satisfaction at beating France on Saturday, and vice versa? A podium finish cant compare to a World Cup final berth, but hey, its better than finishing fourth, right?So hear me out: third-place games for the losers of, say, the NFLs conference championship games and the College Football Playoffs semifinals. (This year, that wouldve been Rams-Broncos and Oregon-Ole Miss, for the record.) Play the game in the home stadium of the higher-ranked team, put some actual stakes on the line FIFA gives an extra $2 million and ranking points to the winner of the third-place game, and all stats count and turn em loose for one more go.The NFLs short-lived third-place game Now, before you add the third-place game to the long list of World Cup elements that we would never adopt in America, like flopping and winning knockout matches against European teams, heres a wild fact: the NFL actually once had a third-place game. The Playoff Bowl ran from 1961 to 1970, pitting the runner-up teams from the NFL and the AFL (later the NFC and AFC) against one another in a game held in Miami.The Playoff Bowl dissipated after the NFL-AFL merger, since it wasnt quite as attractive a property once the playoffs expanded to multiple games (and once Miami got its own franchise). But for a decade, a third-place game was a very real if not necessarily essential element of the pro football landscape.Yes, many coaches and players hated it legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi called it The Sh-t Bowl and termed it a hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink players, and he won the damn thing. But for others, it was a reward for a hard season, an opportunity to knock down big-name competition and, not incidentally, a chance to cut loose on the town with teammates one last time.Croatia's Luka Modri and his teammates look pretty happy celebrating their bronze medals after beating Morocco in the 2022 World Cup third-place match in Qatar.Xinhua News Agency via Getty ImagesBowl games prepared us for thisThe closest American equivalent to the World Cups third-place match is, coincidentally enough, in the sport that most closely matches soccer for its fans religious, occasionally sociopathic devotion: college football. Although theyre very much on the way out now, college footballs bowl games have provided one more opportunity for schools to play, often against opposition theyd never see on their normal schedules.Some schools use bowl games as a paid vacation, allowing players and coaches alike to enjoy a week of stocking up on buffets and swag bags in a warm-weather location. Others take a more tactical approach; Alabamas Bear Bryant, among others, clawed for every bowl game invitation he could get, because it gave him an extra months worth of practice with his team to prepare them for next season. (Ftbol fans unfamiliar with the nuances of college football: Alabama is like Argentina, except their Maradona and Messi were coaches.)By this rationale, why wouldnt a national team manager assuming they havent already been sacked take the opportunity to put some of his younger players in a zero-stakes World Cup environment, to prepare them for next time? A bit more seasoning never hurts.Point is, bowl games thrived for decades even though virtually none of them crowned a true champion. The comparison isnt exact national team players have club commitments, not true offseasons, to start but the fundamental idea is the same. Fans just want to watch their team, no matter what the stakes are and theyre willing to pay for the privilege.(You know, the more I write, the more Im convinced that if FIFA ever hears about this, theyll set up an entire college football-style World Cup bowl series just to wring even more money out of us all. Get ready for the [SPONSOR REDACTED] Atlanta Bowl and the [SPONSOR REDACTED] Dallas Bowl!)Yes, Im aware that under normal circumstances, the chances of third-place games ever taking place are less than zero. But just wait until the NFL and whoevers running college football get a look at the revenue that FIFA will pull in from England-France. And then? Well, start saving for tickets to the 2028 Runner-Up Bowl.

Jude Bellingham urged England fans to maintain their unity after the Three Lions suffered a devastating 2-1 defeat against Argentina in the World Cup semifinals. The 23-year-old midfielder admitted he struggled to find the words to process the heartbreak before sharing an uplifting poem given to him by the team's driver, Michael Chandler. Bellingham Processes Tournament Exit England's star midfielder Bellingham admitted he struggled to find the right words to express his immense disappointment after the Three Lions were knocked out by Argentina in the World Cup semi-finals in Atlanta. Thomas Tuchel's side had briefly led through a 55th-minute Anthony Gordon goal before shipping two late strikes from Enzo Fernndez and Lautaro Martinez. The Real Madrid man, who enjoyed a prolific tournament with six goals to his name, subsequently took to social media to deliver an emotional message to the supporters. Midfielder Calls For Unity Writing on his personal Instagram account, Bellingham shared a moving poem written by the team's bus driver, Chandler, which he felt perfectly captured his emotions during their time in Kansas. "Was really struggling to find the right words for yesterday and the last few weeks but this pretty much hits the nail on the head from our driver in Kansas," Bellingham wrote. The former Birmingham City starlet added: "Thank you for the unbelievable support from back home and to those who spent their hard-earned money to travel to America and get behind us. Don't let the unity and love we've seen in our country end with this campaign. When we're together we can achieve big things ... And we will!" Moving Poem Shared In Full The lengthy poem by Chandler uploaded by Bellingham highlighted the vital importance of mental resilience, self-control, and squad unity when facing adversity on the pitch. The text reads in full: "The Lion does not boast aloud, Nor chase the praise of every crowd. He knows the roar that shakes the night, Is born when fear is met with might. The match is not with foe alone, The truest pitch is self unknown. Before one pass is struck with grace, The heart must first have won its race. For strength is more than driving speed, Or planting firmly every cleat. It lives within the iron will, To climb again the steeper hill. The body tires. The lungs grow tight. The legs grow heavy in the fight. Yet steadfast minds refuse retreat, They drag the weary to their feet. Endurance is a faithful friend, It walks beside you to the end. While others yield to pain's command, It whispers low, "Hold your stand." The clever mind outplays the strong Who rush with fury all day long. A patient pass, a measured pace, Will forever conquer reckless haste. The hawk may see the pitch above, The lion wins through steadfast love Of every movement, every run Where many minds become but one. For tactics are not tricks concealed, But wisdom sharpened on the field. To know when pressing serves the day And when restraint becomes the way. The storm may rage. The crowd may cry. The score may refuse the sky. Yet none of these command the soul Whose purpose governs every goal. No referee can steal your choice. No hostile song can drown your voice. The world may shake, the night may burn Your answer shapes the final turn. England wore Three Lions bright, Not chasing glory's fleeting light. They sought instead a nobler prize, To master self before men's eyes. They trusted feet that years had trained, They trusted minds that calm had gained They trusted hearts that would not bend, Though every minute neared the end One perfect move, One selfless pass, One moment born from countless tasks The net gave way, The crowd arose, The thunder rolled through friend and foe The victory belongs to those, Who rule themselves before the blows And therefore earned a greater name, Than those who merely play the game The whistle blew, The contest done, Three Lions' work had been won Victory now was the score, Lifting gold evermore But greatest triumph, clear to see, Was quiet self mastery. For trophies tarnish And crowds grow still, Time itself outlasts all the skill. But those who govern both heart and mind, Leave fear and doubt far behind So walk the Lion's ancient road, Carry calmly every load Meet each trial firm and true, Let discipline be the strength in you For fortune favors not the loud, Nor always crowns the largest crowd. She often walks beside the one, Whose hardest battle has been won Not on the pitch beneath the lights, But deep within, through sleepless nights And when the final whistle sings, And victory lifts its golden wings The truest roar will still be heard, A soul made strong. A soul assured." Disciplinary Review Threatens Involvement England's attention must now turn to their upcoming third-place game against France in Miami, though Bellingham faces the looming threat of a suspension from FIFA's disciplinary committee. The investigation follows an incident where the midfielder allegedly slapped Argentina's Valentin Barco, an act flagged as violent conduct. Should football's governing body find him guilty, Tuchel will be forced to compete without his primary midfield engine for the consolation match before the Three Lions squad flies back to Europe.

The final is set for Sunday, also featuring a halftime show for the first time

Jul 17, 2026; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Junior Caminero (13) hits a home run during the third inning against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images | Bob DeChiara-Imagn ImagesThis game was a tease.Each time the Rays made a little headway on offense, they quickly gave it back on defense. Well, let me be clearer: Mason Englert, the Rays starter, promptly gave it back, because when the other team is hitting dingers its not the fielders who are letting us down. The Rays started the game taking advantage of Edward Riveras poor control. In the first inning, the first two Rays batters made outs but Junior Caminero singled, and then both Vilade and Mullins walked. There was a moment of hope when DeLuca drove a 2-2 single, an impressive clutch hit, that scored two runs. View LinkBut alas.Englert got the start, and he gave up a double to Rafaela and then a home run to Abreu and before we even had time to think ooh a lead, the game was tied. And then Contreras hit a home run and the score was 3-2. Even the next batter smoked a ball, but Williamson was able to make a great play to turn it into an out. Thats OK though, because in the top of the third inning, our man Junior tied it up with this shot (111.6 mph by the way): View LinkBut the tie didnt last long; in the next inning the Red Sox hit another home run to retake the lead, and then an inning later they scored again on a long double. At the end of four innings the Rays were down 5-3.And thats where it stayed. I guess the good news was that the Rays bullpen Kimbrel, Sulser and Booser all pitched scoreless innings, which would have put the Rays in a position to come back had they actually gotten on base. But after Juniors home run the Rays could muster only two singles, one of which was erased on a double play. All in all, a disappointing and low energy performance today.