⚽️ Kick-off: 6pm local time/11pm BST/8am (Mon) AEST
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Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s what to know about Uruguay and Cape Verde before they meet in a few hours in Miami.

Uruguay

• Head coach looked downwards in official Fifa photo

• ‘The picture was taken the way it was taken’

The Uruguay head coach, Marcelo Bielsa, has lived up to his maverick reputation by refusing to cooperate during a photoshoot for Fifa. Bielsa stared down at the floor, hands in pockets, statuesque, during the obligatory media duty last Wednesday and the 70-year-old hit back when asked about the incident after Uruguay’s 1-1 draw with Saudi Arabia on Monday.

“I’m not a model,” he said. “I don’t have to give any explanation, the picture was taken the way it was taken. Should I also explain why I don’t look to the people who are speaking to me at this moment?”

Fifa’s embrace of rapacious American capitalism may have found its limits in Miami, one of the entertainment capitals of the world.

Despite just seven tickets showing as available on their official website at kick-off there were thousands of empty seats – and empty concourses – throughout most of this game, a hard-fought draw which leaves Group H deadlocked following Cape Verde’s stunning draw with Spain earlier in the day.

Uruguay were poor in the first half but upped their game and took a deserved point thanks to Maxi Araujo

2 min The Saudi Arabia attack is led by Salem al-Dawsari, who scored the winner in their astounding win over Argentina four years ago.

1 min Saudi Arabia kick off from left to right as we watch. The match is only four minutes behind schedule, so you can all go chill, relax.

Everything you need to know (and more) about every squad member. Click on the player pictures for more information

Click your way through the group stage and the knockouts to crown champion

Luis Vassy wurde mit dem Auftrag an die große Hochschule Sciences Po geschickt, die Kulturkämpfe dort über Israel und Gaza zu beenden. Nun werfen ihm viele Forscher eine „Eskalation der Repression“ vor.

Every World Cup, from Uruguay and Italy in 1930 and 1934, to Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022, has been to an extent about presenting an image to the world

• This was originally published in the newsletter The World Behind the Cup. Sign up for it here.

Football fans will be well aware that in 1930 Uruguay both hosted and won the first World Cup, but less well known is the diplomatic backstory of the country’s entry on to the international sporting stage. In the 1920s, Uruguay’s foreign minister, who led one of the country’s two rival football associations, coordinated with a diplomat serving in Switzerland to give his federation legitimacy by joining Fifa. The diplomat also entered Uruguay into the 1924 Olympic football tournament in Paris – which was emerging as the premier venue for global football. That provoked panic back in Uruguay: nobody had expected him to do that and nobody quite knew how they would afford it; a federation official ended up having to use his own house as collateral on a loan to pay for the team’s passage across the Atlantic.

Once they got to Europe, Uruguay quickly won admiration. First in nine friendlies as they travelled through Spain and then at the Olympic Games itself, where they became by far the biggest draw. The great novelist Colette was even dispatched to the villa where Uruguay were staying to record her impressions for the newspaper Le Matin. Playing brilliant, coherent passing football, Uruguay took gold at the Games.

This was originally published in the newsletter The World Behind the Cup. Sign up for it here.

Fußball-Leibchen als Milliardengeschäft:  Von falschen Schulternähten, umstrittenen Designs und von Sportartikelherstellern, die mit dem Enthusiasmus der Fans sehr viel Geld verdienen.

The sportswear giant says it’s aware of the strange seam on some of the new shirts, and is looking into how to address it

When Nike rolled out its collection of World Cup kits in late March, fans and pundits alike largely approved. The US men’s national team got arguably their most distinctive pair of shirts in decades, while other federations – France, England, Canada and Uruguay among them – earned strong reviews.

Over the last international break, when players took the field in the kits for the first time, many fans couldn’t help but become fixated on one singular detail of the new shirts: a somewhat unsightly bulge along the shoulder seam.

England were disjointed against Uruguay but no wonder – the head coach’s team selection was an act of self sabotage

Before this game Thomas Tuchel had said he would base his starting XI on what he saw on the training ground. Halfway through an evening at Wembley Stadium that felt like being stabbed very slowly through the eyes with a butter knife made entirely from death, ear wax and empty corporate leisure product, it was tempting to wonder about this.

What exactly had the players left out done in training to be deemed ineligible for this England team? Turn up naked? Vomit into a traffic cone? Attempt to stage a game of Cluedo during set-piece practice? Perhaps Adam Wharton had killed a crow and stapled its innards to the dressing‑room door.

Ben White arrived to a chorus of jeers from the England support when Thomas Tuchel introduced him as a 68th minute substitute. Of course he did. There ought to be no second chances for the Arsenal defender in the eyes of plenty of those present. He let the country down when he walked out on the England squad during the 2022 World Cup and made himself unavailable for the next two years.

The real surprise was what happened next. It was one of those paper aeroplane Wembley friendlies, the fans making their own entertainment in the absence of very much on the pitch. Tuchel was happy enough with the collective performance from his scratch lineup, drilling into the finer details, including the players’ work out of possession. There was next-to-no cutting edge, any drive.

Ben White was booed on, scored what looked like the winner, then gave away a stoppage-time penalty. Say what you will, but the man’s box-office

The teams are out! England in that aforementioned red, Uruguay in their sky blue. Time for the anthems. God Save the King we all know about; the Uruguayan one really gets the juices flowing, though. And while we’re on the subject of Jonathan Wilson, which we kind of were, he tells a wonderful anecdote about that anthem during today’s edition of Football Weekly Extra. Just before the 45-minute mark should get you there; enjoy, enjoy. We’ll be off in a couple of seconds.

Uruguay are not heading into this match in the finest of fettle. Jonathan Wilson reports on that 5-1 shellacking by the USA and some Luis Suárez-infused rancour.

• Defender called up for first time since exiting 2022 World Cup

• ‘There are strong opinions but he deserves a second chance’

Thomas Tuchel has acknowledged that Ben White needs to clear the air with his teammates after returning to the England squad, but the head coach is confident the defender will not be booed by the Wembley crowd during tonight’s friendly against Uruguay.

White has not been part of the setup since exiting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar early for personal reasons and the decision to end his international exile has not gone down well with some people. The Arsenal player has never explained the reasons for his departure and subsequently making himself unavailable for selection for the rest of Gareth Southgate’s time in charge.

Thomas Tuchel’s desire for clarity has him pitching two players against one another for each position. The competitive tension is palpable

In the analysis of Thomas Tuchel’s split-squad approach for this international window, his naming of 35 players for the Wembley friendlies against Uruguay on Friday and Japan on Tuesday – including nine that he has not previously worked with – one detail has slipped under the radar.

It is because it is easy to forget that the England manager recently signed up to stay on for Euro 2028. There is a degree of longer-term planning about him wanting to get a first look, for example, at Ben White and Lewis Hall, Kobbie Mainoo and James Garner. Fikayo Tomori as well. The centre-half left Chelsea for Milan, initially on loan, in January 2021 – four days before Tuchel arrived at the London club for his brief but storied spell.

Sculpture was retrieved from German battleship sunk in 1939 Battle of the River Plate but its future is controversial

The enormous bronze sculpture of an eagle clutching a swastika in its talons spent nearly 70 years lying at the bottom of the River Plate, off the coast of Uruguay.

After being salvaged in 2006, it briefly went on display in the Uruguayan capital – before the government reconsidered the wisdom of granting such prominence to a Nazi emblem, and the eagle was hidden away on a military base.

The Uruguay coach, who had such an impact at Leeds, needs a result at Wembley on Friday after a downturn for the South American side

The pattern is not unfamiliar. Marcelo Bielsa arrives. The force of his personality, the radicalism of his ideas, his charismatic eccentricity, elevates everyone. Results are good, performances intoxicating. The football is not merely successful but comes to be regarded almost as a moral good: playing the right way for a manager who projects a profound sense of integrity.

Gradually the picture changes. Fatigue sets in. Players weary of their manager’s obsessive nature. Pundits and fans begin to wonder if everything has to be quite so relentless all the time. Bielsa’s quirks come to be regarded less with affection than with aggravation. Levels drop, Bielsa leaves.

Bolivian interior ministry says Sebastián Marset is being extradited to US, where he’s wanted for money laundering

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Sebastián Marset, an alleged Uruguayan drug trafficker and one of South America’s most wanted criminals, has been arrested in Bolivia.

Marset, 34, is accused of trafficking tonnes of cocaine from South America to Europe, and also of having ordered the murder of a Paraguayan prosecutor who was shot dead as he honeymooned on a Colombian beach in 2022.

The Afro-Uruguayan rhythms, born among enslaved Africans and once banned, now draws thousands to public squares and carnival parades

Like the blues in the US, samba in Brazil, rumba in Cuba and plena in Puerto Rico, candombe, Uruguay’s Afro-descendent music, was once reviled, marginalised and even banned – but managed to endure.

But while other such genres have for decades formed part of the cultural mainstream across the Americas, only now is candombe experiencing its peak.

A drone view of the Rueda de Candombe gathering in the streets of Ciudad Vieja in Montevideo, Uruguay.