ATLANTA — Argentina advanced to its second consecutive World Cup final Wednesday, scoring two goals in the closing minutes to overcome England 2-1 in a tense, physical semifinal that was scoreless for most of the match.

Enzo Fernández equalized in the 85th minute, and Lautaro Martínez headed in the winner in stoppage time to complete the comeback. Lionel Messi assisted on both goals, extending his influence on a tournament in which the 39-year-old continues to be one of the most decisive players on the field.

Argentina will now attempt to become the first team in more than six decades to win back-to-back World Cup titles when it faces Spain in Sunday’s final. Brazil was the last team to repeat as champion, winning in 1958 and 1962 behind Pelé.

The match began cautiously, with both teams more focused on physical contact than offense. Argentina and England did not register a single shot in the first 30 minutes, a stretch of shotless play that had not been seen at a World Cup since 1966, the earliest tournament for which reliable shot statistics exist. By halftime, the two sides had combined for 19 fouls and zero shots on goal.

England broke the deadlock in the 55th minute when Anthony Gordon volleyed home a goal off a long cross from Morgan Rogers, giving the Three Lions a 1-0 lead and their first shot on target of the match. But rather than push for a second goal, England pulled back into a defensive posture, bringing on taller, more defense-oriented substitutes in an apparent effort to protect the lead.

The approach left England with just 36% of possession over the final stretch and allowed Argentina to gradually build momentum. Julián Álvarez, Alexis Mac Allister and Nico González all had chances go begging — including a Mac Allister header that struck the post — before Fernández finally found the equalizer in the 85th minute, curling a left-footed shot from outside the box off a pass from Messi.

Argentina completed the turnaround in stoppage time. After Mac Allister’s shot hit the post, Messi collected the rebound, held possession, and lofted a cross into the box that Martínez headed past England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford for the winning goal.

England manager Thomas Tuchel defended his team’s approach after the match, saying he had no regrets about the tactical shift following Gordon’s goal.

“In the moment, no regrets,” Tuchel said. “The team gave everything and we were very, very close.” He added that England had “played one of our better matches, maybe our best match,” but that “the team was tough, and we couldn’t bring it over the line.”

Striker Harry Kane, who along with midfielder Jude Bellingham had combined for 12 goals earlier in the tournament, was held without a shot in the semifinal. Speaking afterward, Kane acknowledged the team’s recurring pattern of falling just short in major tournaments.

“We had a lot of good moments in this tournament, a lot of good games, another semifinal,” Kane said. “We talk about knocking on the door. We’re close. We just need to find that missing piece in the final stage of the tournament.”

He added that the physical and mental toll of a lengthy tournament run was significant: “These tournaments take it out of you so much. Effort and pressure and mentality, and we showed a lot of that throughout the whole six, seven weeks we’ve been together. But yeah, we’re just missing that final piece.”

It marks the second straight World Cup in which England has reached the semifinals only to fall short of the final. England also lost in the semifinals in 2018 and reached the quarterfinals in 2022. The country has not played in a World Cup final since it won the tournament on home soil in 1966.

Wednesday’s match carried an added layer of tension given the history between the two nations, both on and off the pitch. Argentina wore its navy blue alternate kit for the match — the same uniform it wore during its penalty-shootout win over England in the 1998 round of 16 and during the 1986 “Hand of God” quarterfinal. Tuchel noted the significance before the match, telling reporters Tuesday, “I would have done the same if there was any superstition combined with it. So credit to them. I was not aware of that.”

Ahead of the semifinal, Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni sought to play down the rivalry narrative when asked about his message to the team. “The message is this is a football game,” Scaloni said. “That’s what I can say. This is a football game and we will be playing against a very tough opponent. They have an excellent coach, and this is a football game, and that’s all.”

Argentina’s path to the final has been far from smooth. The team needed extra time to escape a 3-2 scare against Cape Verde in the round of 32, rallied from a 2-0 deficit to beat Egypt 3-2 in the round of 16, and needed extra time again to beat Switzerland 3-1 in the quarterfinals after Switzerland’s Breel Embolo was sent off.

Messi, who broke a nine-match World Cup scoring streak in the quarterfinal win over Switzerland, remained the tournament’s most impactful player Wednesday despite not scoring himself. Over his last eight World Cup knockout matches, Messi has now recorded seven goals and six assists.

The championship match Sunday will pit Argentina’s bid for a second consecutive title against Spain, with kickoff details to be finalized in the coming days. For England, the wait to reach another World Cup final continues, with Bellingham — at 23, more than a decade younger than Kane — potentially in position to lead another run at the title when the tournament returns in 2030.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The 2026 World Cup will end the way many imagined it might when the draw was made months ago: with Lionel Messi, soccer’s most decorated player of his generation, standing across the pitch from Lamine Yamal, the teenager many believe will define the next one.

Argentina booked its place in Sunday’s final with a dramatic 2-1 comeback win over England on Wednesday, while Spain reached the championship match a day earlier with a 2-0 victory over France, completing what tournament organizers have called a historic semifinal round — the first time in the newly expanded format that all four of FIFA’s top-ranked teams advanced to the final four, and the first time since 1990 that the semifinals featured only past World Cup winners.

For Argentina, the final represents a chance to become the first nation to win back-to-back World Cup titles since Brazil in 1958 and 1962. For Spain, it is a return to the sport’s biggest stage for the first time since the team’s 2010 triumph, and a chance to add a second star above its crest.

At the center of it all are two players separated by two decades in age but linked by more than just talent. Yamal, who turned 19 the day before Spain’s semifinal against France, has spent his career being compared to Messi — a comparison that traces back to a photograph of a young Messi holding an infant Yamal at a Barcelona hospital years before either man knew what the image would come to represent.

Yamal has not dominated this tournament statistically. He has scored only once in Spain’s run to the final, a modest output for a player who shared Barcelona’s league scoring lead last season with 16 goals. But his impact Tuesday against France went beyond the box score. In the 22nd minute, Yamal darted toward France defender Lucas Digne as Digne attempted to clear a loose ball inside his own penalty area. Digne’s clearing kick caught Yamal in the thigh, drawing a penalty that Mikel Oyarzabal converted for what proved to be the difference in a 2-0 win.

Spain coach Luis de la Fuente, asked about Yamal’s quiet scoring tally on the eve of the semifinal, said he believed the teenager’s defining moment was still ahead of him. Afterward, he credited the collective nature of his team’s performance, saying through a translator that the squad interprets “to perfection every play of the game.”

Yamal himself has downplayed the pressure to produce highlight-reel numbers, framing his contribution in team terms. “If we win the World Cup, I think nobody will remember how many goals I scored or how many I didn’t,” Yamal said in translated remarks before the semifinal. “I only give what I have, always at the service of the team, always to the maximum.” He added that Spain’s run to the Euro 2024 title, secured with him scoring just once in that tournament, showed that individual totals mattered less than the outcome: “I think everyone’s obsessed with scoring goals, and we won the European Championship with me scoring a single goal.”

That composure has not always been evident behind the scenes. Spain captain Rodri said before the France match that Yamal had at times played with a nervous energy that undercut his instincts on the wing. “I think he needs to calm down a bit, that anxiety that sometimes he has to prove himself,” Rodri said. “He’s a very important player for us because of what he does with and without the ball, and he’s a very intelligent guy. It’s true that he’s 19 years old and that we have to calm him down at certain moments of the game.” Rodri also praised Yamal’s growth since Spain’s European Championship win two years ago, calling him “a young man who listens, who wants to learn, and above all, sets a real example with his attitude.”

Messi, at 39, remains central to Argentina’s attack in a way few players his age have managed at a World Cup. He did not score in Wednesday’s semifinal against England, but he set up both of his team’s late goals — a cross that led to Enzo Fernández’s equalizer in the 85th minute and a second assist on Lautaro Martínez’s stoppage-time winner. Over Argentina’s last eight World Cup knockout matches dating back to the team’s 2022 title run, Messi has now compiled seven goals and six assists, a stretch of production that has kept him at the heart of Argentina’s biggest moments even as the roster around him has changed.

Sunday’s final will be Messi’s fifth World Cup and, by his own past comments about his career timeline, likely his last chance to add a second title before he steps away from international soccer. It will be Yamal’s first World Cup final, arriving before he turns 20 and with the bulk of his career still ahead of him.

The stylistic contrast between the two finalists adds another layer to the matchup. Argentina has leaned on resilience throughout the knockout rounds, having needed extra time to beat Cape Verde, come from behind to beat Egypt, and grind past Switzerland in the quarterfinals before Wednesday’s late rally against England. Spain, by contrast, arrived at the final unbeaten and untied through the group stage and knockout rounds, controlling matches for long stretches behind a possession-based approach that has become the identity of Spanish soccer over the past two decades.

Both teams will be chasing history regardless of the outcome. A win for Argentina would make it the first repeat champion in more than 60 years. A win for Spain would give the country its second World Cup title and cement Yamal, still a teenager, as a champion on the sport’s largest stage before he turns 20.

Kickoff for Sunday’s final is expected to draw one of the largest global television audiences in World Cup history, with organizers and broadcasters framing the matchup around the Messi-Yamal storyline even as both camps have downplayed any individual rivalry in favor of team success. For now, the two players who have spent years being linked by a single photograph will finally share a final together — on opposite sides.

The honeymoon is over for the biggest flotation in stock market history. SpaceX shares fell below their $135 IPO price for the first time on Wednesday, leaving thousands of UK retail investors who put £271 million into Elon Musk’s space venture staring at paper losses barely a month after its debut.

Shares in the satellite, rockets and artificial intelligence company slid 2.5 per cent to $132.64 in lunchtime trading, dipping under the price set when it made its stock market debut on June 12. The stock pared its losses to close at $135.27, down $0.81, or 0.6 per cent, on the day.

It is a sobering moment for a listing that only last month saw shares touch $150 on day one. The oversubscribed float attracted huge global interest from institutional and ordinary investors alike, promoted by 23 banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, which are reported to have collectively earned hundreds of millions in fees.

For the ordinary savers who piled in, the picture is less rosy. SpaceX courted retail investors on an unprecedented scale in the run-up to the float, allocating 20 per cent of IPO shares to non-professional investors drawn to Musk and his pledge to build “the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary”. UK retail investors alone spent £271 million to be part of it.

Many of those backers will be business owners and entrepreneurs who saw the float as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The outlook for anyone who bought at the IPO price and held on is now uncertain.

The fundamentals have not changed since the company lifted the veil on its finances ahead of the listing. SpaceX, founded in 2002, made its name building rockets and launching satellites, but most of its $18.7 billion in revenue last year came from its Starlink satellite internet business. The company reported $4.9 billion in net losses in 2025.

What has changed is the mood.

“There hasn’t been anything lately to remind people of some of the catalysts for why they bought SpaceX,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.

“The fact that a stock has fallen a couple of dollars below its IPO price in itself is not a tragedy but SpaceX is heavily watched and has an important role in investor psyche.”

The numbers involved remain staggering. SpaceX raised about $86 billion in its IPO and ended its first trading day valued at roughly $2.1 trillion, making Musk the world’s first trillionaire. By Wednesday afternoon in New York the valuation had drifted to $1.8 trillion.

Musk’s own net worth has fallen to an estimated $861 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, though he remains comfortably the world’s richest man, ahead of Google co-founder Larry Page on $306 billion.

For UK business owners, the episode is a timely reminder that even the most feverishly hyped listings obey gravity. First-day pops reward those who sell, not those who hold, and the Financial Conduct Authority’s guidance on understanding high-risk investments makes the point plainly: the higher the potential return, the higher the risk of losing your money.

A $2.64 dip below the float price is hardly a catastrophe. But for the small investors who helped bankroll the largest IPO in history, the rocket ride has, for now at least, gone into reverse.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

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Sensex rose over 200 points 77,388 while Nifty 50 gained around 64 points to 24,142 during Thursday’s trading session. This came as India VIX, which measures volatility in the stock market, dropped 3.5% to 13.27.

IT stocks, including HCL Tech, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and TCS, were the top gainers on Sensex, rising 1-3%. Trent, Maruti Suzuki, M&M and Titan shares meanwhile gained nearly 1% each. Bucking the trend, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finserv, SBI and HDFC Bank shares lead losses on the benchmark index, trading marginally lower.

Broader markets also traded in the green, with Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indices gaining up to 0.5%. Sectorally, Nifty IT lead gains after rising nearly 2% in the morning trading hours. Nifty Financial Services and Nifty PSU Bank meanwhile slipped into the red. The overall market breadth was positive, with NSE seeing 1,662 advances and 749 declines, while 112 stocks remained unchanged.

Iran-US conflict escalations

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Geopolitical worries continue to hang like a dagger over Dalal Street, although the bulls seem to ignore them now after the prolonged selloff earlier this year. Fewer vessels travelled through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, the first day after the US reimposed its naval blockade on Iranian ports with both countries escalating strikes across ‌the Gulf, ⁠Reuters quoted shipping ⁠data as showing.
Around seven vessels crossed the Strait on Wednesday, down from 13 recorded in the previous day. Meanwhile, hostilities intensified since Iran said during the weekend that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway that accounted for 20% of daily global oil and gas supply shipments before the war.
Oil prices remained muted, with Brent crude futures falling below $85 per barrel and WTI Crude futures trading below $80 per barrel. While they have inched down slightly, oil prices have recorded sharp gains from last week’s lows.
Rupee nearly unchanged
Rupee opened at 96.2475 against the US dollar, nearly unchanged from the previous closing level of 96.2550. “While the softer dollar offered temporary support, higher energy prices remain a key concern for India’s import bill and the rupee’s outlook. Market participants will continue to track foreign fund flows, crude oil movement, and upcoming US economic data for further direction. Technically, the rupee is expected to trade in the 95.75–96.45 range in the near term,” said Jateen Trivedi, VP Research Analyst of Commodity and Currency at LKP Securities.

Meanwhile, foreign investors remained net sellers of Indian equities on Wednesday, net selling shares worth around Rs 736 crore, according to provisional data on NSE. However, FIIs have remained net buyers on Dalal Street for nine out of 11 trading sessions in July so far.

What lies ahead?
With no major changes in crude prices and global markets holding steady, Indian stock market is likely to trade in a narrow band with a positive bias, said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Investments. With many companies reporting their Q1 results in the coming days, the market is likely to respond to the results, he noted.

“Financials-both banks and NBFCs- are likely to report good set of numbers aided by robust credit growth now running at 18%. Automobiles is a sector to watch closely since the growth numbers for Q1 would be impressive and the sector continues to exhibit momentum, aided by GST cuts and easy availability of finance. Most segments of the sector -cars, SUVs, two-wheelers, commercial vehicles, exports- are doing well. Digital platform companies, too, will be reporting good growth numbers. Announcement of bonus issue by Paytm in the July 20th board meeting is an important news,” according to the analyst.

Technical view on Nifty
Bajaj Broking expected Nifty 50 to extend the recent consolidation and trade in the range of 23,800-24,350. “Within the consolidation last Friday’s gap area and Monday’s low of 24,000-23,950 will act as immediate support, holding above the same will lead to pullback towards 24,250-24,350 levels being the upper band of the recent consolidation range,” it said..

“Short term support is placed at 23,800-23,900 levels being the confluence of the almost identical low of the last 4 weeks and 50 days EMA. While only a breakout above 24,350 will signal strength and open upside towards 24,600 levels being the high of April 2026,” the domestic brokerage further said.

(With inputs from agencies)
(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)