Manchester United forward Matheus Cunha scored twice as Brazil comfortably overcame Haiti – who became the first team to be eliminated from the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
Carlo Ancelotti’s side responded to criticisms of their performance in their opening-game draw with Morocco with a impressive display, albeit against lesser opposition in Philadelphia, to go top of Group C.<\/p>\n
Cunha, who replaced Brentford striker Igor Thiago in the starting line-up, scored a fortuitous opener in the 23rd minute when Haiti defender Hannes Delcroix kicked the ball off him and it spun into the net.<\/p>\n
However, the forward was the first to react to Haiti goalkeeper Johny Placide pushing Vinicius Jr’s shot back out which forced Delcroix to react.<\/p>\n
Cunha’s second was a fine finish after Vinicius Jr put him through and he rifled a strike into the top corner nine minutes before half-time.<\/p>\n
Vinicius Jr then got in on the act in first-half stoppage time after former West Ham midfielder Lucas Paqueta played a brilliant ball over the top and the Real Madrid star calmly slotted home past the goalkeeper for his second goal of the tournament.<\/p>\n
The only disappointment for Ancelotti’s side was an injury to Barcelona winger Raphinha, who was forced off in the opening 45 minutes and replaced by Bournemouth’s Rayan.<\/p>\n
Brazil keeper Alisson did need to pull off a fine second-half save when Ricardo Ade rose to divert a corner on target but the result was never in doubt.<\/p>\n
Teenager Endrick was denied a goal on his World Cup debut with the offside flag going up after he netted late on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester United forward Matheus Cunha scored twice as Brazil comfortably overcame Haiti – who became the first team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-748639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}