Sport england world cup

33 shots on target after England’s World Cup campaign gets up and running (contains spoilers)

Poke Reporter. Updated June 18th, 2026

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The England team got their World Cup campaign up and running – and kicking – on Wednesday, and if you don’t want to read any spoilers, look away now. And also, you should probably stay off the internet until you catch up.

Here’s a nice gif of Gary Lineker to shield you from seeing anything you don’t want to… unless you don’t want to see Gary Lineker.

Gary Lineker doing a 'meh' face.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk freely about England beating Croatia 4-2, in a game that will have been more dangerous to the fans’ blood-pressures than the score would suggest.

There was excitement as Harry Kane got proceedings under way.

Here’s the moment Jude Bellingham broke the 2-2 deadlock just after half-time, building on Kane’s early brace.

The ‘hydration break riled a lot of people, mostly because the Dallas Stadium wasn’t particularly hot, and the break just happened to be long enough to shoehorn in some ads for US viewers. The cynical out there weren’t convinced it was a coincidence.

Instead of ads, the UK audience got US women’s coach Emma Hayes giving some expert insight – from a set that looked like Gino D’Acampo might pop up at any moment and start criticising people’s pasta recipes.

The match was the talk of Twitter – and every other social media site. Here’s a taster of what people were saying.

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