Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo will be able to play his side’s opening matches at next year’s World Cup after FIFA suspended the final two matches of a three-match ban.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo was sent off in Portugal’s penultimate qualifying match against Ireland in Dublin earlier this month for an elbow into the back of Dara O’Shea during a 2-0 defeat.<\/p>\n
The red card meant Ronaldo missed Portugal’s final group game, a 9-1 win over Armenia which secured qualification, and FIFA confirmed that the 40-year-old had been given a three-match ban, but barring a repeat incident, he will not serve any further punishment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Spain cannot meet Argentina and France will not face England before the World Cup final, provided they win their groups, after FIFA announced the draw procedure.<\/p>\n
The rule aims to maintain competitive balance in the expanded 48-team format, ensuring the top-ranked team (Spain) and number two (world champions Argentina) are in opposite halves of the bracket, with the same applying to number three (France) and number four (England).<\/p>\n
Even if those teams do not win their groups, the top four seeded countries will not be able to meet until the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
The 2026 World Cup draw takes place on December 5 in Washington, with the updated match schedule, including stadiums and kick-off times, to be released on December 6.<\/p>\n
Hosts Canada, Mexico and the U.S. are in Pot 1 which includes Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.<\/p>\n
Pot 2 has Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, South Korea, Ecuador, Austria and Australia.<\/p>\n
Pot 3 will include Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.<\/p>\n
Pot 4 will be Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curacao, Haiti, New Zealand, and the winners from the European play-off A, B, C and D, and the FIFA Play-Off tournament 1 and 2.<\/p>\n
Confederation constraints will apply, with no group having more than one team from the same region except UEFA, which has 16 representatives and can place up to two teams in a group.<\/p>\n
The tournament in the US, Mexico and Canada kicks off on June 11, with the final on July 19 in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Source: Reuters & RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo will be able to play his side’s opening matches at next year’s World Cup after FIFA suspended the final two matches of a three-match ban. Ronaldo was sent off in Portugal’s penultimate qualifying match against Ireland in Dublin earlier this month for an elbow into the back of Dara O’Shea during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15822,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15820\/revisions\/15822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}