⚽️ Kick-off time: 7.30pm EDT/12.30am BST/9.30am AEST ⚽️ Third-place table | Player guide | Group tables | Mail Beau⚽️ DR Congo v Uzbekistan – live updates from Group K LIVE Updated now Beau Dure Sun 28 Jun 2026 02.19 BSTFirst published on Sat 27 Jun 2026 22.30 BST Share Key events 1h ago Halftime: Colombia 0-0 Portugal 3h ago Starters and players to watch 4h ago Preamble Cristiano Ronaldo tangles with Colombia midfielder Jhon Arias as Bruno Fernandes looks on.
Photograph: Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock Cristiano Ronaldo tangles with Colombia midfielder Jhon Arias as Bruno Fernandes looks on.
Photograph: Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock Key events 1h ago Halftime: Colombia 0-0 Portugal 3h ago Starters and players to watch 4h ago Preamble 86 min Some clever work from Portugal, but it’s finally knocked out of play.
For Colombia, Puerta ends up with a yellow card for a foul in the build up.
Muñoz replaces Santiago Arias, which means the number Ariases in this game has dropped from two to zero.
85 min Colombia keep passing to an immobile Suárez, and the ball is intercepted each time.
84 min Credit to both teams – they have not wilted in this heat and humidity.
This is still an above-average World Cup game.
South Korea would be eliminated if the DR Congo result holds.
83 min Portugal free kick, and several Colombian players end up clattered to the ground.
82 min Foul on Quintero, who blasts the ball away.
That’s supposed to be a yellow card, but no one seems to be calling it.
So if Portugal give up two goals and DR Congo score three more … Portugal end up third.
81 min Colombia handle the corner kick well and break, but Portugal recover.
DR Congo score again!
They’re on their way to the knockout round if they can hang on.
80 min Ronaldo has the ball in some space but not a great angle.
He earns a corner kick.
79 min Machado threads a beautiful pass, but then a cross to Luis Díaz doesn’t quite get there.
77 min Just noticed that an assistant coach looks just like Tommy Shaw of Styx.
Corner kick for Portugal, played out to Dalot, who curls a shot from outside the box that doesn’t miss by much.
76 min Huge ovation for James as he and Jhon Arias depart.
Castaño and Quintero are in for Colombia.
James Rodriguez comes off for Quintero.
Photograph: Image Photo Agency/Getty Images 75 min I’ve live-blogged 165 minutes of soccer in the past two nights, and I have not seen a goal.
74 min Oh, we have a penalty shout.
Suarez was eyeing a shot and swung his leg, but Mendes’ body was in the way.
Mendes didn’t initiate contact, though, so play on.
73 min Luis Suárez turns brilliantly!
And scuffs his shot.
Colombia maintain possession, and James takes a long-range shot that deflects.
71 min DR Congo have apparently scored.
Now 1-1.
If you care about a team on the third-place bubble, that really matters.
Subs for Portugal: Rafael Leão replaces João Félix, and Samú Costa replaces Vitinha.
Nuno Mendes was the player down in the box, and he gets some treatment before walking off … just as we begin hydration.
66 min Colombia in the attack, the ball is cut back to Jhon Arias, and Costa has to react well after a slight deflection.
Corner kick, Portuguese player down in the box, and Puerta runs onto a ball and just misses the post.
65 min Suárez runs past the defense onto a through ball.
Not a great angle, but his shot yields a corner kick.
Not much comes of it, though.
63 min Another error from Ríos – a wholly unnecessary late tackle, giving Portugal a free kick from a little more than 30 yards.
Portugal chip it in for Ronaldo, but it goes out.
The xG on that shot was 0.44.
Ríos should’ve done better.
62 min Good overlapping run from Santiago Arias, played into the box, and Ríos puts his shot wide.
60 min Colombia decide not to mark Félix any more, and he’s wide open.
He passes to Ronaldo, but the 41-year-old is overeager and drifts offside.
He missed anyway.
For Colombia, Luis “Not That One” Suárez and Richard Ríos is in, while Córdoba and Lerma are out.
Surprised James is still in.
He has hit the wall.
Cristiano Ronaldo fires wide but it’s offside.
Photograph: Lynne Sladky/AP 58 min Portugal taking the air out of the ball at the moment.
Colombia press for an instant but back off again.
Energy conservation appears paramount here.
But this could still be a dangerous possession.
Félix tries a cross for Ronaldo but puts it over his head.
56 min The fans have come back to life (or maybe come back from buying water), and the tension level has gone up a bit as Portugal pass and pass.
Félix turns and shoots into a wall of yellow.
54 min Whoa!
That was a scorcher from Lerma from 22 yards, but it goes straight to Costa, who just has to raise his fists to punch clear from Portugal’s goal.
A follow-up shot presents an easier save.
53 min Other way quickly, and Félix is off to the races but doesn’t pass sharply.
53 min The temperature has cooled to a wintry 85 degrees.
Colombia go direct but can’t really control.
51 min As scintillating as this game was in the first 45 min +3, I have a sense it might peter out here.
I type that in the hopes of coaxing legitimate attacking play, and I’m rewarded as Portugal play a good cross to Félix, but he doesn’t get a clean header on it.
49 min We have soccer bowling!
Three players fall like pins.
I think Félix exaggerated.
Fernandes did not, even if he took a Colombia player with him.
Free kick to Portugal.
48 min Also an uninspired sequence for Portugal Colombia moving forward. (Oops – teams change sides at the half, don’t they …) 46 min Sloppy touch from Neto, and Colombia have a goal kick.
Pedro Neto trips Deiver Machado.
Photograph: Jon Olav Nesvold/BILDBYRÅN/Shutterstock Subs for Portugal: João Neves replaces Ruben Neves.
Diogo Dalot replaces Cancelo.
James and Ronaldo chat as they walk through the tunnel.
James covers his mouth, but the context means he will not be punished.
Seemed to be very friendly, in any case.
Probably something like, “So, did you get your AARP membership card?” Mary Waltz asks: “is Xg a sign of fine play or does it just mean a sign of a lack of clinical finishing?” Yes.
OK, more seriously – it only measures the likelihood of shots going in the net based on where the ball is, what defenders are around, whether it’s with the foot or head, etc.
So it’s not a bad measure of finishing.
It’s also a very loose way of measuring who created the better chances, but it’s not a comment on the balance of play.
Turkey wound up with a better xG than the USA, I was told, but a lot of it is based on the fact that the last goal was a tap-in.
The likelihood of the series of passes leading to the goal would’ve been much lower.
Kári Tulinius, with the subject heading “dragging an old guy around”: I love watching James Rodriguez play football, he’s as pure a number ten as has graced a pitch in the last decade.
However, in a side otherwise fleet of foot and passing, he does slow things down.
Portugal aren’t the only team dragging an old guy around, though there isn’t an obvious replacement on the Colombian bench like Ramos is on the Portuguese.
I was on the treadmill for a solid 20 minutes yesterday.
That’s my answer to that.
The tale of the long throw-ins has attracted quite a bit of mail: George Meikle: I was lucky enough to play rec soccer in a FIFA men’s league (you pay, you get to play but FIFA admin which included player id cards which was good) in Indianapolis in the early 1980s.
Everybody used long throws - this league had some well set up clubs organized around diasporas: the German club, the English, Mexico, we were Yanks, and a couple more.
The well established clubs - Germany, England, Mexico – had tiers of developing players they used, while we were just middle class professionals, mostly engineers, who like football.
Round kind.
But those clubs with a history showed us real tactics up close, like pressing, long throws etc.
Joshua Reynolds: Rory Delap: still the undisputed GOAT of the long throw?
I say, yes.
David Dyte: That’s patently insane, even aside from the fact that the coach seems to think long throw ins don’t exist at the pro level.
At the D1 level, you aren’t coaching to win?
At what point can players think about winning the game?
I get this with five year olds, but come on.
I’d love to see the reaction if Nick Saban said he’d only ever been worried about development and that winning was secondary.
“Development over winning” went to such extremes in the USA (in rhetoric, anyway, but not in practice) that a U-19 rec league commissioner talked about the importance of developing players.
For what?
Intramural soccer in college? (Apologies if none of this makes sense to an international audience.
College soccer?
What?) Second straight game I’ve covered in which the referee has blown the whistle while one team is on the attack.
Is there another game scheduled after this one?
In any case – great half, especially given the conditions.
One outstanding save for Colombia’s Vargas; a couple of good ones by Costa at the other end.
Someone probably says the xG is something like 3.48 to minus-1.32, but whatever.
45 min +3 James unleashes a 20-yard left-footer, and Costa has to dive to punch away.
45 min +2 Ronaldo tries a low-percentage shot of his own, and it’s blocked.
Foul on Portugal as Colombia break, but the referee makes a good advantage call. (Love when that happens.) 45 min +1 Not sure why Luis Díaz would take that shot from outside the box at an angle.
Misses the near post by some distance.
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but you also miss 100% of those.
Colombia bring it back, but the final pass is lacking.
Three minutes of stoppage time.
Thanks, hydration break.
45 min Free kick for Portugal at midfield, and they’ll tap it short.
Possession is brief, but Cancelo wins it back.
Then he loses it.
Jhon Arias has it and drops it back to Puerta, who shoots from 20 but straight at the keeper.
44 min Veiga blocks a 20-yard right-footed shot from James as Colombia combine well.
42 min Another big chance for Portugal!
Hey, it’s a long throw-in!
João Felix chests it down, but the touch is a bit too far, and his effort to stretch for the shot sends the ball over the bar.
39 min POINT-BLANK SAVE BY VARGAS as a Colombian defender slips and Fernandes has the ball 8 yards out.
He blasts it on goal, but Vargas gets his arms up to stop it.
Ronaldo tries a bicycle kick on the rebound but can’t connect.
Neves ends up taking a long-range shot that deflects, but the deflection went unseen by the men in black.
Cristiano Ronaldo goes so close to the opener for Portugal.
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images He can’t quite connect with the follow-up.
Photograph: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images 38 min End to end now, as Portugal cause some discomfort in the Colombian defense.
Shot from outside the box is dragged wide of the far post.
38 min Two Colombia players in position for a cross, but they’re right next to each and not where the cross went.
36 min The international feed shows us bouncing Colombian fans while the ball is in play.
They’re back in time to see Córdoba knocked down to get a free kick for Colombia.
Two balls end up on the field, and they pick one to kick.
Jhon Arias breaks through and has just a split-second to shoot, and it’s easily caught.
35 min VAR apparently checked to see if Colombia should have a penalty kick.
They should not.
34 min Arias crosses, though I think he was offside.
33 min This is interesting.
Back and forth passes between two Portuguese players until the one without the ball ends up sprawled on the grass.
Not sure if a foul was there.
32 min Portugal play forward to Ronaldo, who is so far offside that the AR eventually concedes that he simply has to raise the flag.
Photograph: Jam Media/Getty Images 31 min Corner to Colombia, and Portugal are furious.
James lines up to take it.
This could be a dangerous … … never mind, VAR hath intervened.
29 min We’re back, and Colombia are possessing.
Portugal’s defense seem to have adjusted a bit, though, and the passing lanes just aren’t there.
Ah, right – long throw-ins.
I attended a session at the national soccer coaches convention, a massive to-do in the USA, and a pedantic college coach from a school I won’t name (because I’m not 100% sure I remember it) showed videos from his team’s games as part of a “We Really Have To Stress Development Over Winning And We’re Not Kidding This Time” session.
He sniffed that the other team was using long throw-ins.
He said he would never do that because he was preparing his players for the next level.
A couple of days later, I saw a Premier League score off a long throw-in.
I guess he was preparing ACC players for a higher level than Arsenal?
We’ve seen a lot of long throw-ins at this Cup, even though the stadiums used here are nice and wide, in contrast to some of the fields in the 1994 edition.
Hydrate!
OK, what was the story I was going to tell?
24 min Free kick to Portugal, 28 yards out dead center, and Ronaldo bangs it past the wall but not past Vargas.
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