{"id":631708,"date":"2026-09-30T03:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T03:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/631708\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T03:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T03:26:15","slug":"nations-league-roundup-lamine-yamal-sinks-croatia-in-spains-world-cup-homecoming-nations-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/631708\/","title":{"rendered":"Nations League roundup: Lamine Yamal sinks Croatia in Spain\u2019s World Cup homecoming | Nations League"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lamine Yamal scored two goals and set up another as Spain hammered Croatia 4-1 on Tuesday in the Nations League<\/a> in their first home game since lifting the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Lamine Yamal had opened the scoring within two minutes against England in Saturday\u2019s Wembley win<\/a> and took just 75 seconds to do so against Slaven Bilic\u2019s side in Andalusia. The teenager\u2019s left-footed finish took his tally of international goals to nine in 36 appearances.<\/p>\n

Just before the half-hour mark, the visitors equalised through Dion Beljo\u2019s header as the 6ft 4in attacker headed home from an Ivan Perisic cross.<\/p>\n

Two minutes later the hosts restored their lead as Marc Pubill fired home a header from a pinpoint Lamine Yamal cross before provider turned scorer again on 63 minutes, beating Barcelona teammate and Croatia<\/a> goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic at his near post. With fewer than two minutes to play Athletic Bilbao\u2019s Nico Williams notched up a fourth for Spain with a crisp dribble and finish.<\/p>\n

La Roja next play Czechia on Saturday in Group A3.<\/p>\n

Lamine Yamal\u2019s contribution strengthened his case for the Ballon d\u2019Or, with voting having closed on Monday and the winner announced on 26 October.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s captain, Rodri, showed off the World Cup trophy before kick-off at the packed Estadio Ram\u00f3n S\u00e1nchez-Pizju\u00e1n, being handed it by Sevilla legend Jes\u00fas Navas, a winner with Spain<\/a> in 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very excited to bring the cup here,\u201d Lamine Yamal said. \u201cTo be able to win the game and bring it home is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In Group B1, Slovenia beat North Macedonia 2-0 with goals from Sandi Lovric and Aljosa Matko.<\/p>\n

Moldova were held to a 1-1 draw at home to the Faroe Islands and Slovakia beat Kazakhstan 2-1, while Iceland were 3-0 winners in Luxembourg and Estonia drew 1-1 in Bulgaria. Finland and Belarus played to a scoreless draw in Helsinki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lamine Yamal scored two goals and set up another as Spain hammered Croatia 4-1 on Tuesday in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-631708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}