\n<\/p>\n
England made it through to the semi-finals of the 2026 World Cup after they defeated Erling Haaland\u2019s Norway by a score of 2-1. It was never easy for the Three Lions, but they managed to grind out a fantastic result at the Hard Rock Stadium.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thomas Tuchel\u2019s team struggled on a number of occasions throughout the game as they laboured to break down their opponents, but nevertheless came from behind to progress.<\/p>\n There weren\u2019t many standout performer for England \u2013 apart from one in particular, who we\u2019re sure you can figure out without us having to tell you.<\/p>\n A steady game for Jordan Pickford. There was nothing he could\u2019ve done to prevent Andreas Schjelderlup\u2019s freak goal \u2013 outside of this, his distribution was typically excellent.<\/p>\n Playing out of position at right-back, Ezri Konsa had a steady outing. While solid defensively, the Aston Villa man contributed little in the final third.<\/p>\n A solid defensive display from John Stones, he dealt with Norway\u2019s counter-attacking threat well with his typically-excellent positioning.<\/p>\n Manchester City\u2019s Marc Guehi wasn\u2019t quite as strong at the back as Stones was, often being bullied in the air by Haaland and Alexander Sorloth, but did little wrong outside of this.<\/p>\n \n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" England made it through to the semi-finals of the 2026 World Cup after they defeated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16882","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=16882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}GK: Jordan Pickford \u2013 6<\/h2>\n
RB: Ezri Konsa \u2013 6<\/h2>\n
CB: John Stones \u2013 7<\/h2>\n
CB: Marc Guehi \u2013 6<\/h2>\n