{"id":14208,"date":"2026-06-11T10:05:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=14208"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:05:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:05:20","slug":"rice-scores-on-eve-of-world-cup-international-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=14208","title":{"rendered":"Rice scores on eve of World Cup | International | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Declan Rice helped England&#8217;s World Cup preparations sign off strongly with a goal in a 3-0 victory over Costa Rica in Orlando.<\/p>\n<p>Following heavy rain, the match in Florida was delayed, kicking off at 10pm UK time. However, when the action got underway, it was one of our stars who helped Thomas Tuchel&#8217;s side to victory.<\/p>\n<p> From Anthony Gordon&#8217;s cutback, Rice got his shot away from inside the box, which deflected past goalkeeper Patrick Sequeira and into the net.<\/p>\n<p>Another one of our Gunners, Noni Madueke, was also starting the match, and he almost made it 2-0 when he brilliantly rounded Sequeira, but couldn&#8217;t get his shot away.<\/p>\n<p>Into the second half and we saw our two other Gunners, Eberechi Eze and Bukayo Saka, introduced, and it was the former who played a big part in England&#8217;s second goal.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"block_content\" data-entity-uuid=\"2061c80d-9298-4e3b-a137-d7a42ce06534\" data-embed-button=\"javascript_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:block_content.full\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<\/article>\n<p>Having been played through by Jude Bellingham, Eze&#8217;s shot was handled and a penalty awarded. Having set up the first goal, Gordon, who has recently joined Barcelona from Newcastle United, converted.<\/p>\n<p>Further chances followed, with Eze playing in Morgan Rogers, who fired just wide. The Three Lions made it 3-0 late one when Ollie Watkins pounced on a rebound to ensure England go into the World Cup with two warm-up wins from two.<\/p>\n<p>Our quartet of lions will face Croatia on Wednesday, June 17, at 9pm UK time in their opening clash, before taking on Ghana and Panama.<\/p>\n<p>Find out when all of our Gunners will be in action during the group stages by reading our preview below!<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"node\" data-entity-uuid=\"2acd1238-a932-480d-80b4-cc01bf86e50b\" data-embed-button=\"article_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:node.tiny\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<article data-article-id=\"128900\" about=\"\/news\/when-will-our-stars-be-world-cup-action\">\n<div class=\"article-card article-card--tiny card\" data-eq-pts=\"xsmall: 200, small: 550, medium: 640, large: 768\">\n<div class=\"card__content\">\n<p>\n         <span class=\"h6 article-card__subhead\">Read more<\/span>                             <\/p>\n<h3 class=\"article-card__title\" title=\"When will our stars be in World Cup action?\"><span class=\"article-card__title-words\">  When will our stars be in World Cup action? <\/span><br \/>\n          <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Declan Rice helped England&#8217;s World Cup preparations sign off strongly with a goal in a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}