{"id":50098,"date":"2026-06-24T07:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=50098"},"modified":"2026-06-24T07:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T01:24:08","slug":"england-held-croatia-keep-world-cup-hopes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/england-held-croatia-keep-world-cup-hopes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"England held, Croatia keep World Cup hopes alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><strong>Kathmandu, June 24:<\/strong> Croatia secured a hard-fought victory while England were held to a draw in the FIFA World Cup 2026 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>In Group L, England and Ghana played out a goalless draw in their second group-stage match. England had begun their campaign with an impressive 4-2 victory over Croatia, while Ghana defeated Panama 1-0 in their opening fixture.<\/p>\n<p>In the other Group L match, Croatia edged past Panama 1-0 at Toronto Stadium. Veteran striker Ante Budimir scored the decisive goal to hand Croatia their first win of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The victory moved Croatia to third place in the group with three points from two matches, keeping their qualification hopes alive. Panama, meanwhile, remain without a point and have been eliminated from the competition with one group game still to play.<\/p>\n<p>England and Ghana sit first and second respectively, both on four points from two matches, leaving the race for the knockout stage wide open heading into the final round of group fixtures.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Portugal produced a dominant performance to thrash Uzbekistan 5-0 and strengthen their position at the top of their group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kathmandu, June 24: Croatia secured a hard-fought victory while England were held to a draw in the FIFA World Cup 2026 on Tuesday. In Group L, England and Ghana played out a goalless draw in their second group-stage match. England had begun their campaign with an impressive 4-2 victory over Croatia, while Ghana defeated Panama [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-main-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50098"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50101,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50098\/revisions\/50101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}