While his players were still going through warmups on Thursday morning, Mauricio Pochettino moved aside a metal barricade surrounding the soccer field at the University of Washington and climbed to the top of the small hill behind the goal at the west end.
There, like a proud parent watching their kids on a random weekend day, the head coach of the U.S. men’s national team pulled out his phone and started taking video. For whatever the reason — the manicured field, the picturesque setting with Lake Washington and Mount Rainier both peaking out in the distance, or making sure there weren’t any spies around — Pochettino wanted to capture this moment.
“I wanted to see how everything (looks) without me,” Pochettino joked.
And then a moment later he added, “Amazing, beautiful facilities.”
While it was important for Pochettino to capture that moment, Friday will be a day for capturing moments never seen in Seattle when the United States and Australia meet in the group stage of the FIFA Men’s World Cup. The winner will clinch a spot in the Round of 32, and it would take an epic collapse to not finish top of the group.
Events such as Friday don’t come around here often. Perhaps never before. On an international scale, it might be the most significant sporting event to ever take place in Seattle.
NFC championship games are great. The Major League Baseball playoffs are electric, as evidenced by last October. The NBA Finals were fun in 1996. Same with the WNBA Finals this century. The Final Fours back in the 1980s and ’90s were fantastic. The three MLB All-Star Games are all memorable for their own reasons. The soccer cup finals — MLS, Concacaf and Leagues Cup — have all helped write Seattle’s storied history in the sport. The Goodwill Games in 1990 were internationally significant for what they were at the time.
But for sheer scale, try knocking Friday from the top spot.
“This is probably the biggest game Seattle will probably have in terms of soccer, and so I’m excited for the city to come out and show their energy,” U.S. and Sounders midfielder Cristian Roldan said on Thursday. “But this is a sports town and they treat every big moment like that.”
The idea of a soccer match being the biggest single sporting event in a city is counterintuitive to American culture and sporting norms. It’s supposed to be the NFL first, followed by everything else.
But it’s the international component of the World Cup pushing this to the top — and it could be topped again in just a couple of weeks when a Round of 16 match is played in Seattle, potentially with the U.S. involved in that game as well.
While there’s only been one previous World Cup played in the U.S. in 1994, Seattle will be just the fourth different metropolitan area where the Stars and Stripes have played a World Cup match in North America.
In 1994, the opening match for the U.S. was in Pontiac, Mich., followed by two matches at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., and finally a knockout stage loss to Brazil in Palo Alto, Calif.
Throw in last Friday’s 4-1 win over Paraguay in Inglewood, Calif., and the U.S. has played three matches in the Los Angeles area, one in Detroit and one in the Bay Area.
And now, Seattle.
“I’m excited to see what it’s like,” said U.S. midfielder Weston McKennie, who was born in Tacoma before moving at a young age. “I’ve never been here with the national team before. Hopefully it’s similar to SoFi (Stadium), or better.”
Just like Pochettino before practice, plenty of fans — close to 67,000 of them — will capture similar moments with their phones and cameras on Friday. Some will take snaps and videos outside of Seattle Stadium as fans of the Socceroos merge with the American Outlaws and mingle about the stadium district chanting and singing and probably drinking far too early.
Inside the stadium, they’ll capture the players as they walk out while “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project — the old Chicago Bulls intro music — plays over the stadium speakers. They’ll see two countries that captured unexpected attention with what they did in their opening matches of the tournament — the U.S. thumping Paraguay and Australia unexpectedly toppling favored Turkey.
They should capture the moment, because on an international scale it hasn’t been bigger here.
“This is a city that’s ready to host these types of events,” Roldan said. “From the march to the match to how loud the stadium will be — hopefully the boom, boom, clap — I think the city of Seattle is going to create the advantage for the United States men’s national team.”
Roldan is the resident evangelist when it comes to this moment for the U.S. squad. McKennie said it’s been Roldan or, in the past, Jordan Morris or Clint Dempsey he’s heard sing the praises of what Seattle is as a soccer market.
Someone else who has a small taste for what Seattle could be like is Pochettino. In the summer of 2014, as a freshly appointed new manager at Tottenham, the first match of his tenure during the club’s summer tour happened to be an exhibition in Seattle against the Sounders.
Harry Kane was on the field that day for Tottenham. So too were Dempsey and DeAndre Yedlin for the Sounders.
“I saw the ambience … and I hear they are very passionate people here,” Pochettino said. “I’m looking forward for tomorrow to share altogether a great night, I hope with a good result and good performance.”
Australia would like for nothing better than to build off victory over Turkey and ruin the American party, and perhaps dance around the city celebrating with inflatable kangaroos. The sides played in a friendly that was far from friendly last October, a match the U.S. won 2-1 and snapped a 12-game unbeaten streak by Australia.
But it was a physical, borderline chippy matchup that saw U.S. forward Christian Pulisic leave with an injury and seemed to come close to crossing the line between exhibition and competitive match with something significant at stake.
Pulisic is a question to play on Friday because of a calf injury, but there’s no questioning the significance of the matchup this time.
“I expect it to be a tough game. I don’t think it will be a nasty game, but a tough one,” U.S. defender Sergiño Dest said. “I think they’re physical, but we are physical as well. So it will be tough for them and tough for us.”

Canada’s Ismael Kone suffered a scary injury early in the second half of his team’s World Cup game against Qatar on a tackle that earned a red card for Assim Madibo.
Canada’s players and coaches were incensed after the tackle, an immediate reaction indicating that Kone might have had a serious injury. Some players shoved back the Qatar opponents, while Canada manager Jesse Marsch and his staff could be heard on the broadcast incredulously asking the referee how the play could be called simply a foul. It later was upgraded to a red card.
Madibo put his hands over his head and waved his hands in the air, offering an apology for the severity of his tackle from behind.
After trainers put an air cast on his left leg, Kone was wheeled off the field on a stretcher. He waved to fans in Vancouver who were chanting his name.
The red card was Qatar’s second of the game with Homam Ahmed having been sent off in the 31st minute.
Canada midfielder Nathan Saliba replaced Kone in the 56th minute. He scored a fourth Canada eight minutes later from a free kick and ran to the bench where he was handed a KONE 8 jersey. He held it up, as fans cheered the goal.
Kone is a dynamic midfielder who was born in the Ivory Coast but moved to Montreal when he was seven. He came through the CF Montreal academy system and debuted with the MLS club in 2021. He quickly drew the attention of European clubs, moving to Watford in 2022. This was his second World Cup after Kone made his World Cup debut in 2022, just months after making his senior international debut in March of that year.
This story will be updated
World Cup standings
Explore live group standings, stats and the updated bracket with USA TODAY Sports here.
2026 World Cup format
The 48 competing nations are divided into 12 groups of four. Each group will play a round robin style where teams are awarded three points for a win and one point for a draw. The top two teams in each group advance to the Round of 32 along with the eight best third-place squads. Tiebreakers in the group standings will be resolved using the following criteria:
Greatest number of points obtained in the group matches between the teams concerned
Superior goal difference resulting from the group matches between the teams concerned
Greatest number of goals scored in all group matches between the teams concerned
Superior goal difference in all group matches
Greatest number of goals scored in all group matches
Highest team conduct score (players and team officials) relating to the number of yellow and red cards obtained
The two or more teams still equal on points shall be ranked according to the most recent published edition of the FIFA Men’s World Ranking
World Cup groups
Group A : Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Czechia
Group B: Canada, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar, Switzerland
Group C: Brazil, Morocco, Haiti, Scotland
Group D: United States, Paraguay, Australia, Turkey
Group E: Germany, Curacao, Ivory Coast, Ecuador
Group F: Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Tunisia
Group G: Belgium, Egypt, Iran, New Zealand
Group H: Spain, Cape Verde, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay
Group I: France, Senegal, Iraq, Norway
Group J: Argentina, Algeria, Austria, Jordan
Group K: Portugal, DR Congo, Uzbekistan, Colombia
Group L: England, Croatia, Ghana, Panama
Full rosters for 2026 World Cup teams
World Cup key dates

When Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews sent Geena Davis the script for the first episode of what would become their Netflix sci-fi drama The Buroughs, the actress was all in on the show and her character, Renee, especially, a vibrant, confident former music manager who resides in the titular retirement village.
“I was like, ‘This is crazy how perfect this is for me,’ Davis tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And then when I met with them, and I said that, they said, ‘Well, we wrote it with you in mind, hoping you would say yes.’”
That she did, along with co-stars Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman, Denis O’Hare and Clarke Peters, the retirees at the center of the series who go against the owners of their community when they find out they’re using it as a front to drain residents of their brain fluid and feed it to a creature that allows them to stay young.
In the final episode, “Triple Audible,” the gang succeeds in their quest to take down the youth-obsessed CEO and his wife. And it’s a good thing they did, as Netflix just announced the Matt and Ross Duffer-produced series won’t be renewed for a second season.
Davis says the cast wasn’t given an explanation for the cancellation. “Fortunately, the creators, who became our dear, dear friends, were able to tell us before the news came out, and we’re all terribly disappointed. Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I think it’s probably rare for a show to not get picked up and to have it announced that it’s not being picked up while it’s still in the top 10.
“We didn’t expect that,” she continues. “But the creators told us from the beginning that the series was not going to have a cliffhanger ending to the first season, that someone had advised them, ‘Make it its own thing. And if you come back to do another year, make that its own thing.’ And we really did. There’s a tiny hint at the end that maybe everything isn’t fixed, but it is a complete story. And if we had made it as a limited series, then it would’ve been a big hit and everybody would be happy.”
Cancellation aside, the show, which premiered on May 21, is still available for streaming — and still in contention for this season’s Emmy race in the drama series categories. Below, Davis talks about her character’s steamy love scenes with co-star Carlos Miranda and why she’s, unfortunately, under no illusion that the series will spark an offshoot of stories centered around older characters.
How would you describe Renee, and why did you say she was the perfect role for you?
Well, I would describe her as a badass, which implies that I think I’m all that and I think I’m a badass, but I aspire to be. I’ve been really lucky in my career that I had the opportunity to play characters that were much further along in their badassery and their development and becoming their authentic selves than I am. It’s uncanny the level of people that I get to play — the president of the United States [in Commander in Chief]. I’m like, “People believe me? I’m the president. All right, then I do too,” Thelma & Louise, so many incredible roles. I happened to have written a memoir a couple of years ago called Dying of Politeness, which I had spent my life doing, and talk about how it’s kind of the story of my life in a way that I have gotten to play characters who are much bolder than I was at that time, and it rubs off on you. There’s fake it till you make it, and then there’s act it till you become it. So playing characters who were so ferocious and bold and confident and determined and all that helped me profoundly in my personal life.
And now you’re actually in your badass stage.
Right.
Renee’s relationship with Paz (Miranda) is such a big part of the conversation around her. You said these were the steamiest scenes you’ve ever done …
No, I misspoke because whoever was interviewing me said, “Wait a minute, what about Thema & Louise?” I’m like, “Oh my God. Wait, wait. OK. It doesn’t get steamier than that scene.” So this was also a nice steamy scene; definitely a really cool scene. As an actor, I’ve gotten to have some pretty remarkable romances onscreen. Very happy about that.
When you got to the part about their sexual relationship in the script, did you have any hesitations? Were you excited?
I was really excited. It didn’t spell out exactly what happened, but the meeting and the flirting and everything was so delightful. And Carlos Miranda is the sweetest, best guy in the world. We had so much fun together. And we got to have some really great scenes together that were romance and adventure and action. I say to [Paz] at one point, “No, come on, I want to stack bodies.” And he’s like, “Stack bodies? Who are you?” But he’s there to help me stack bodies. He is.
Obviously, the age dynamic is part of what makes Renee and Paz’s relationship so interesting. Did you worry at all about how audiences might receive it or if it would open a can of worms about, say, what if this were an older man with a much younger woman?
No, I didn’t worry about it one iota, and nobody else did when it came out. I’ve seen comments like, “Hey, awesome.” Nobody has said, “Well, wait a minute.” There really isn’t anything inappropriate about our relationship. It was a delight to work with Carlos. He’s a dream.
I was reading another interview where you said, “I don’t have faith in things onscreen starting a trend,” which was in response to the May-December romance piece, but I’m curious if you feel the same way about the prospect of seeing more stories about older characters in general as a result of the show.
Well, we always do here and there, and then momentum doesn’t happen. I came up with my theory about how difficult it is to [continue] momentum after Thema & Louise, because it had a huge — it was 35 years ago — reaction, both in people recognizing Susan [Sarandon] and me on the street, and also in the press. We were on the cover of Time magazine, and I think a week later, it had two editorials in there because two people felt strongly enough about what a horrible, horrible thing it was. And there was a lot of reaction like that. “Now the world is ruined.” “Women have guns.” “This is a horrible message to be sending,” but they also all said across the board, “This will change everything. Now we are going to see so many movies with female leads, female stars, female action movies, female buddy pictures.” And so we’re like, “Hot dog. We’re going to usher in a whole new era.” And I’m [still] waiting for that to happen.
My very next movie, a year later, was A League of Their Own, which miraculously and wonderfully became a giant hit. And all the press said, “This will change everything. Now we’re going to see so many female sports movies, and it’s going to change everything. It’s going to just open the floodgates.” Let’s name all the female sports movies that have come out in 34 years. And when First Wives Club came out, they were all, I think, in their early 50s, the press was like, “Oh my God, this will change everything because of these women, it’s a giant hit.” And not only did it not change everything, it didn’t change everything for the actual women in the movie. I have no faith in the momentum thing. I think it’s going to take creators deciding. My institute [the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media] is all about show it and it will happen. If they can see it, they can be it, is our motto.
That brings me to the news of The Boroughs cancellation. How did you find out? Were you given an explanation?
No, not necessarily. Fortunately, the creators, who became our dear, dear friends, were able to tell us before the news came out, and we’re all terribly disappointed. Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I think it’s probably rare for a show to not get picked up and to have it announced that it’s not being picked up while it’s still in the top 10. We didn’t expect that. But the creators told us from the beginning that the series was not going to have a cliffhanger ending to the first season, that someone had advised them, “Make it its own thing. And if you come back to do another year, make that its own thing.” And we really did. There’s a tiny hint at the end that maybe everything isn’t fixed, but it is a complete story. And if we had made it as a limited series, then it would’ve been a big hit, and everybody would be happy. We so fell in love with each other that we just wanted to keep working together. I suggested that the creators write another series, a completely different story with the exact same actors and writers and crew, and we just do it again like an anthology series, right?
Have you heard of any possibility that Paramount could pick it up with The Duffer Brothers move to the network?
No. I haven’t heard anything about that.
But you’d be open to returning if somehow the series is revived?
Oh, hell yeah. Or spinoffs, for Renee and Carlos.
You’ve said that The Buroughs redefines retirement. Is retirement in your vocabulary at all?
So not. You think, “When I get to that age, I’ll be so different.” I remember when I was a kid, I endlessly fantasized about New Year’s 1999, and that’s going to be such a big deal. I think I would be 44 or something. And I pictured every detail, the dress I would have on at this chic party with a martini and my hair in a French twist. And then New Year’s Eve came, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m still me.” It was the same with high school when I was a freshman. I was like, “Those seniors, oh my God, at some point I’ll be a senior and the freshmen will look at me like, ‘Wow.’” Nothing happened. So on the topic of retirement, I don’t feel any different. There’s nothing different about me. My age makes me laugh because I thought it would be so different to be my age. It’s totally not.
Before The Boroughs, we hadn’t seen you on a TV show since Glow. Was that because you were more focused on film at the time, or had nothing interesting come to you in that period?
Yeah, nothing interesting enough had come along. I just go by what’s good. I read it and I go, “Yes, I want to do this.” Even if they don’t necessarily want me, I say, “I want to do this.” I had to talk Ridley Scott into hiring me for Thelma & Louise.
How’d you convince him?
Originally, he was the producer. He was not the director, and he had a director, and that director picked Thelma and Louise, and then that fell apart, and now there was a new director, and he already picked his Thelma and Louise. It happened three times. After that, Ridley decided he was going to direct it himself. So during this year, my agent at the time called Ridley’s office once a week to say, “If anything happens, Geena is still really interested.” So when he became the director, he said, “Yes, yes, I will meet her with her. Yes.” And I just pitched the shit out of it and got cast.
How do you feel about the roles that are offered to you now?
I’m still getting cool stuff. I’m in Budapest now, shooting a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Kellys?
Yeah. And again, I get to be a little bit of a badass. I’ve got lots of irons in the fire. I feel good.
Earlier this week, you were serving as chair of the Bentonville Film Festival, which is centered around inclusion and is very much an extension of your founding of the Geena Davis Institute more than 20 years ago, with a focus on gender equality. How do you feel about the fact that we’re still having these conversations?
We started out as an institute on gender and media, and soon expanded to race and ethnicity, disabilities, age, body size, LGBTQ, all different things. We have made a lot of progress, particularly in children’s entertainment. Children’s movies and TV are now at gender parity, which is profoundly different from how it was when we started out. So we’re thrilled about that. And the whole reason I started the Institute was because I realized we were teaching kids from minute one to have unconscious gender bias because the shows that we’re watching were wildly imbalanced. So it’s a huge, fulfilling goal to me to really help improve kids’ TV.

Shinnecock Hills lived up to its reputation as one of the toughest tests in golf on the opening day of a fog-delayed US Open.
When play did get under way, two hours later than scheduled, only six of the early starters broke par as strong winds buffeted an already tricky course on Long Island, New York.
Among them was world number two Rory McIlroy, whose one-under 69 left him one behind unfancied American Sam Stevens as the 78 players in the later wave headed out onto the course
And with the blustery conditions forecast to strengthen as the day wears on, both players will expect to remain firmly in the mix, given that in the four previous US Opens held at this venue, there have been 1,792 rounds and only 161 (9%) have been played under par. In fact, just three players have ended up under par after 72 holes.
Much of that was down to the substandard playing conditions at Shinnecock in both 2004 and 2018 with players accusing championship organisers the United States Golf Association (USGA) of “losing the course”.
Speaking recently to the No Laying Up podcast, USGA’s John Bodenhamer, the man responsible for course set-up this year accepted the previous conditions had been suboptimal but insisted they had “learned a lot”.
For example, water is being hosed onto the greens during the opening two rounds to stop them from drying out, and to keep the grass alive.
The US Open is generally regarded as the toughest of tests though and all the players spoke of needing to remain patient. And that patience was tested from the off on Thursday with low-lying cloud and fog shrouding the course.
However, once it had been dispersed by the strong gusts whipping in off the Atlantic Ocean, the true nature of the challenge ahead was laid bare.
Thick rough, five inches deep, flanks the fairways. Wispy fescue and undulating and fast greens add further layers of complexity to Shinnecock’s fearsome reputation.
Not that McIlroy seemed perturbed as the wind gusted beyond 30mph across the 7,440-yard track.
The six-time major winner, who started on the 10th, knocked in two birdies in the opening three holes and even bogeys at the 13th and 16th holes did not appear to provide him with any cause to revaluate his approach.
During the round McIlroy, who successfully defended his Masters title in April, told Sky Sports pundit and Solheim Cup great Mel Reid that because conditions were “consistent”‘ he was not finding things too bad at all.
He aptly demonstrated that after the turn with a birdie at the third and by carding a sensational eagle on the par-five fifth after hitting his tee shot a wind-assisted 396 yards before nudging his second shot to 11 feet.
Even though he was unable to end strongly, McIlroy has taken great satisfaction from his overall display.
“Anything under or around even par is a good score,” said McIlroy who won his solitary US Open title in 2011.
“It was a day to keep yourself in the tournament and not shoot yourself out of it, which is exactly what I did eight years ago here,” added the 37-year-old who opened with an 80 in 2018 as he went on to miss the halfway cut.
McIlroy’s playing partners Ludvig Aberg and Tommy Fleetwood also enjoyed solid starts.
Swede Aberg also shot a 69 while England’s Fleetwood knocked in birdies on the fifth and sixth holes – his 14th and 15th – as he posted a level-par 70.
World number one Scottie Scheffler found greens and birdies hard to come by as his bid to become the seventh player in history to complete the career Grand Slam got under way.
Only Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy are in that exclusive set of winning all four of the men’s majors.
And on this evidence, the American, who has topped the rankings for the previous 161 weeks will need to improve on a scrambling two-over 72 which featured four birdies, four bogeys and a double-bogey.
Twice in three holes he cut a bemused figure as his iron shot found the green only for it to spin away from the hole and cost him chances of making a birdie.

The UFC White House card produced seven knockouts in seven fights, and that means a lot of the athletes who competed this past Sunday night are looking at potentially lengthy layoffs as a result.
On Thursday, California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster shared the medical suspensions from the UFC White House card with MMA Fighting after he served as one of the regulators for the event for the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports.
Both main event fighters, Justin Gaethje and Ilia Topuria, were handed six-month suspensions after they engaged in one of the most epic battles in recent history. Gaethje ultimately walked away victorious after he battered Topuria with punches, closing both of his eyes and blasting him with a knee to the body that led to his corner stopping the fight between the fourth and fifth rounds.
As a result, Topuria was handed a 180-day suspension, or he has to be cleared by an oral and maxillofacial surgeon to compete any earlier. He was also handed a mandatory 60-day suspension with no exceptions.
Meanwhile, Gaethje may have won, but he also received the same 180-day suspension, or he has to be cleared by a physician for a potential right wrist injury, as well as a left knee MRI for the damage absorbed during the fight.
In the co-main event, Alex Pereira suffered a second-round knockout loss to Ciryl Gane in his heavyweight debut, and he’s also looking at a 180-day suspension as a result. To compete any earlier, Pereira has to receive a physician’s clearance from a maxillofacial CT scan.
Pereira was handed a mandatory 45-day suspension due to his knockout loss.
Here’s the full list of medical suspensions handed down from the UFC White House card:
Justin Gaethje: 180-day suspension unless cleared for right wrist injury, MRI on left knee. 45-day mandatory suspension.
Ilia Topuria: 180-day suspension unless cleared by an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. 60-day mandatory suspension for knockout.
Alex Pereira: 180-day suspension unless cleared by maxillofacial CT scan. 45-day mandatory suspension for knockout.
Ciryl Gane: 8-day mandatory suspension to rest
Sean O’Malley: 8-day mandatory suspension to rest
Aiemann Zahabi: 180-day suspension unless cleared by maxillofacial CT scan. 45-day mandatory suspension for knockout.
Josh Hokit: 8-day mandatory suspension to rest
Derrick Lewis: 45-day mandatory suspension to rest after knockout
Mauricio Ruffy: 8-day mandatory suspension to rest
Michael Chandler: 45-day mandatory suspension for knockout
Bo Nickal: 4-day mandatory suspension to rest
Kyle Daukaus: 45-day mandatory suspension for knockout
Diego Lopes: 30-day suspension unless cleared for left eye by physician
Steve Garcia: 180-day suspension unless cleared for left hand injury with x-ray. 60-day mandatory suspension for knockout