{"id":743263,"date":"2026-06-17T23:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/743263\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:23:10","slug":"fifa-world-cup-2026-live-updates-ghana-take-on-panama-england-beat-croatia-4-2-ronaldos-portugal-draw-1-1-with-dr-congo-uzbekistan-and-colombia-up-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/743263\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA World Cup 2026 LIVE updates: Ghana take on Panama; England beat Croatia 4-2; Ronaldo\u2019s Portugal draw 1-1 with DR Congo; Uzbekistan and Colombia up later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston: Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal teammates were surprisingly held to a 1-1 draw by the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday at 2am (AEST) in their opening match at the World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>DR Congo, who are playing at the World Cup for the first time in 52 years, became the second African nation to make a strong start in the tournament against European competition following Cape Verde\u2019s 0-0 draw with Spain on Tuesday (AEST).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cristiano Ronaldo is not happy.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/8d530b2ca2d662c0dcb32c4c2c79c35300204e195c83ad711a0b6816d52058b7.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Cristiano Ronaldo is not happy.Getty<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe World Cup is a tournament where this happens,\u201d said Portugal coach Roberto Mart\u00ednez, a Spaniard who coached Belgium to the semi-finals at the 2018 tournament. \u201cAt times, the performance is not up to the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Playing in front of a crowd of 68,777 spectators at NRG Stadium, which was mostly filled with Portugal supporters, DR Congo earned their first point at the World Cup after losing all three of their previous matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston: Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal teammates were surprisingly held to a 1-1 draw by the Democratic Republic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-743263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}