England
Today's Talking Points
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1England beat France 6-4 in Miami last night to take third place at the 2026 World Cup — their best finish since they won the whole thing outright in 1966. Ten goals in one match is a new record for a third-place game, the highest-scoring one in World Cup history. Bronze isn't gold, but it's the best England have managed in sixty years, so let them have this one.
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2Bukayo Saka came off the bench and scored a hat-trick — his second for England — having been dropped for the semi-final defeat to Argentina in favour of Morgan Rogers. He'd spent the days before insisting he was fully fit and wanted more minutes; three goals later, he'd made the point better than any interview could. Drop this in and you'll sound like you've been tracking the team sheet all tournament.
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3Jude Bellingham got in on it too, scoring deep into stoppage time for his seventh goal of the tournament — the kind of tally that puts him right in the conversation for the competition's top scorer, even in a match that didn't count for silverware.
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4France weren't just making up the numbers either — Kylian Mbappé scored twice and, somewhere in the chaos, became the World Cup's all-time leading scorer, overtaking Messi's old record of 21. It's a genuinely huge milestone that got almost completely buried under the goalfest around it.
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5Manager Thomas Tuchel had grumbled beforehand that 'nobody wants to play' the third-place match, then watched his team produce one of the most entertaining games of the whole tournament. He's since talked about the semi-final exit leaving 'scars' England will use as fuel heading into Euro 2028 — so treat bronze as the start of a comeback story, not the end of one.
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Top thing to say down the pub
Saka came off the bench and banged in a hat-trick in a 6-4 game against France — bronze medal, best England finish since '66, and he wasn't even supposed to be on that long.
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Avoid saying
"So they lost, then?" — England just won a bronze medal in the highest-scoring third-place game in World Cup history, with a Saka hat-trick from the bench. Lead with the semi-final defeat instead of that and you'll sound like you switched off after the Argentina game.