England confront old World Cup adversaries Croatia in their opening game of next year’s tournament after a draw that gave them a potentially hazardous route forward if they progress.<\/p>\n
Croatia, who beat England in the 2018 World Cup semi-final, are 10th in the Fifa rankings and dangerous tournament operators, but not the force they were. Head coach Thomas Tuchel will be optimistic his side will get out of a section that also includes Ghana and Panama.<\/p>\n
England will be one of the tournament favourites as they attempt to end the long wait for a major men’s trophy stretching back to the 1966 World Cup, but if they win their group they will have to do it the hard way to make history.<\/p>\n
If they progress to the last 16 having won their group, they would potentially face co-hosts Mexico in Mexico City’s famous Aztec Stadium if they had also topped their group and won a last-32 match. Mexico are ranked 15th in the world so will be a threat. It would also be a tough assignment fuelled by raw emotion and colour of an entire nation behind their team in a hostile atmosphere.<\/p>\n
If England reach the quarter-final, there is then the tantalising \u2013 not to mention extremely difficult – prospect of facing Carlo Ancelotti’s Brazil.<\/p>\n
One factor working in England’s favour is that their first game against Croatia is on 17 June, giving them extra time to prepare and factor in pre-World Cup friendlies as the tournament starts with Mexico playing South Africa on 11 June.<\/p>\n
But with the World Cup draw complete, Tuchel can now start making his plans to fulfil the sole mission of his appointment on an 18-month contract, namely to win the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England confront old World Cup adversaries Croatia in their opening game of next year’s tournament after a draw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-301177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}