Welcome to day 25 of the 2026 World Cup finals.
We are aiming to bring you a daily round up of the matches to come and recent results.
There are 48 countries at these 2026 World Cup finals, the most there has ever been. The matches to take place across Mexico, Canada and the USA.
We were left with 32 countries for the knockouts after 16 were eliminated in the group stage.
The 16 eliminated at the end of the group stage were: Czech Republic, Qatar, Haiti, Turkey, Curacao, Tunisia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Panama, Uzbekistan, Scotland, Iran and South Korea.
Then you can add Australia, Cape Verde, Ghana, Croatia, Algeria, Austria, DR Congo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Senegal, Sweden, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, South Africa. Netherlands, Germany and Japan to that list as they exited in the round of 32.
Canada and Paraguay have now been added to make it 34 knocked out, with 14 countries remaining as possible winner of the 2026 World Cup.
Saturday saw the first of the last 16 matches played out and co-hosts Canada gave it everything. They were by far the better team against an out of sorts Morocco but nothing more true than needing to convert that into goals when you are on top. Sure enough, still goalless at half time and then five minutes into the second half Morocco score an excellent set-piece goal and Canada left thinking about that first half failure to convert superiority and chances. Ounahi then added his and Morocco’s second on 82 minutes and game over, Rahimi adding a third deep into added time just to rub it in further. Canada can be well pleased with both their hosting of World Cup matches and how their team played overall, however, a case of what might have been as Morocco head into the last eight.
Morocco will face France, the other country to progress on Saturday. That match ended in a 1-0 win over Paraguay in Philadelphia but it tells you little of how this match played out.
Paraguay deserved the praise they received for the battling qualities the showed to overcome Germany against the odds in their last 32 match. However, they deserve zero praise after this embarrassing episode.
Like most people I was rooting for underdogs Paraguay when this match kicked off but it didn’t take very long for that to change. Obviously they were now up against clearly the best team at this 2026 World Cup but that doesn’t excuse their approach to trying to give themselves some kind of chance of progressing. The craziest stat of these World Cup finals will surely be that France ended up with three yellow cards in this match and Paraguay not a single one.
It reminded me of the way Wimbledon used to play back in the 1980s and trying to intimidate the opposition, summed up perfectly when the absolute disgrace that is Vinny Jones bullied Gazza. I could never get my head around how this was then portrayed by much of the media as a big joke.
Almost 40 years on and it seems all but impossible to believe that we watched what Paraguay got away with, now there is VAR, all the help the referee on the pitch gets these days, including of course a word in his earpiece that clearly happens in matches but we are supposed to all pretend doesn’t happen.
In this match the Paraguay players put in one shocking challenge after the other and with the referee refusing to punish them, it simply emboldened Paraguay to get ever worse as the match went on. The attempted provocation and intimidation was off the scale as they tried to reduce this to a battle rather than a game of football. As the match reached the later stages it became clear that the France players were not willing to try and keep the ball because they knew they would get clattered, the Paraguay tactics working as the referee encouraged them. This especially effective because then when the France players tried to react in kind, they were getting booked! A case of them having to take the dirty tactics employed by Paraguay but not allowed to dish it out themselves.
Kylian Mbappe scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot in the 70th minute. This moment in the match should have on its own seen half the Paraguay team booked. The referee happy to let them do everything they could to put off Mbappe, continually surrounding him as they delayed and attempted to put him off, the keeper repeatedly approaching him instead of staying in his goal, one Paraguay player blatantly scuffing the penalty spot up in order to try and impact on the penalty when taken.
As I said earlier, I was rooting for the underdogs when the match kicked off, but by the end I was willing France to win. I have never been a fan of Kylian Mbappe (as a person) but I thought he was excellent in how he dealt with the clowns on the Paraguay team and their behaviour during the match and after the final whistle.
I will be hoping Morocco knock France out in the quarter-finals but if Paraguay had somehow manged to knock them out on Saturday, it would have left a horrible stain on this tournament.
Anyway, back on to more important matters and I will be cheering on Bruno Guimaraes and Brazil tonight as they take on Erling Haaland and Norway, before then the late shift as Dan Burn and England look to get past Mexico and set up a potential England v Brazil quarter-final.
It is now 261 goals in 90 matches and this 2026 World Cup not far short of averaging three goals per game for the first time since the 1958 World Cup but the chances of it happening are now reducing in the knockout stages. The closest since 1958 was the 1970 Mexico World Cup that averaged 2.97 goals per match, this 2026 World Cup now averaging 2.90 goals per game after the first 90 matches. There are now only 14 games left to play (including the third-place play-off match).
Here are the round of 16 results and remaining games to be played to decide the quarter-finalists (plus the one quarter-final already confirmed), all kick-offs are shown as UK times and with the channel that is showing them.
Round of 16 knockout fixtures and results
Saturday 4 July
Canada 0 Morocco 3
France 1 Paraguay 0
Sunday 5 July
Brazil v Norway 9pm (ITV1)
Monday 6 July
Mexico v England 1am (BBC1)
Portugal v Spain 8pm (BBC1)
Tuesday 7 July
USA v Belgium 1am (BBC1)
Argentina v Egypt 5pm (ITV1)
Colombia v Switzerland 9pm (ITV1)
Quarter-finals
Thursday 9 July
France v Morocco 9pm (TBC TV)
Here is the full 2026 World Cup schedule:
Enjoy!