PHILADELPHIA — Brazil hopes its 2026 World Cup gets going on Friday, taking on Haiti as Group C moves into matchday two of the tournament with the five-time champions looking for their first win after a sluggish start.

Carlo Ancelotti’s Seleção was sluggish in its opening match against Morocco, outplayed by the 2022 semifinalist and perhaps fortunate to escape without picking up a loss. The result left Brazil searching for answers heading into a far more favorable matchup on paper against a Haitian side appearing at the World Cup for the first time in 52 years.

Vinicíus Júnior Points to the Pitch

Brazil’s star forward offered a specific explanation for the team’s struggles in their opener, pointing to conditions at MetLife Stadium rather than tactical shortcomings. Vinicíus Júnior pointed the finger at the MetLife Stadium pitch, saying the dry playing surface made it difficult to get into Brazil’s usual rhythm. In Philadelphia, conditions won’t be any cooler, but the field at least isn’t sitting atop a hard synthetic surface below, offering the Brazilians at least one meaningful change in playing conditions as they look to find their footing.

A Historic First Meeting in Decades

The matchup carries notable historical significance given how rarely these two nations have crossed paths on the World Cup stage. In Haiti, Brazil faces an opponent at the World Cup for the first time in 52 years, but the Caribbean nation has made clear it intends to do more than simply make up the numbers in Group C.

A Significant Talent Gap, but Signs of Competitiveness

Despite the considerable gap in overall quality between the two nations, Haiti has shown flashes of genuine competitiveness in its own World Cup opener that suggest this matchup may not be the complete mismatch the rankings would otherwise indicate. Brazil got better in the second half against Morocco, and that momentum should continue against a significantly weaker opponent — Haiti is ranked 85th in the world by FIFA after the opening round of matches, even falling below New Zealand in the live standings.

Still, in narrow defeat, Haiti edged possession against Scotland and matched its opponent in expected goals at 1.05 xG, demonstrating an ability to at least compete at this level. Ultimately, however, it is a massive mismatch which ought to only produce one winner.

Brazil’s Path to Improvement

Analysts have identified a clear area where Brazil needs to show growth if it hopes to convert its talent advantage into an actual result on the scoreboard. Brazil will hope to create more than a single big chance in this match, which was the case against Morocco. A large part of that was due to being stifled by a strong opponent, but manufacturing opportunities more frequently remains important if the Seleção wants to assert its dominance against lesser opposition.

A Lopsided Head-to-Head History

The two nations’ limited history on the pitch overwhelmingly favors Brazil by a remarkable margin. Haiti has only ever tasted defeat in meetings with Brazil across three prior matches, in 1974, 2004, and 2016. The Seleção has scored 17 goals to Haiti’s one across those encounters — a staggering disparity that underscores just how lopsided Friday’s matchup is expected to be on paper.

Predicted Lineups

Carlo Ancelotti is expected to make several changes to his starting lineup following Brazil’s underwhelming performance against Morocco. Despite an outstanding Premier League season, Brentford’s Igor Thiago underwhelmed on his opportunity to lead the line for his country at a World Cup and could pay the price. Manchester United’s Matheus Cunha is next in line — and actually wears the No. 9 jersey as well.

Former Real Madrid and Manchester City veteran Danilo could also be drafted into the starting eleven. He replaced Roger Ibañez, usually a center back, at halftime against Morocco after a first-half booking. Lucas Paquetá may also drop to the bench after Brazil’s first-match struggles.

Brazil’s predicted lineup in a 4-4-2 formation: Alisson; Danilo, Marquinhos, Gabriel, Santos; Paquetá, Casemiro, Guimarães, Raphinha; Cunha, Vinicíus Jr.

On the Haitian side, manager Sébastien Migné faces only a slight doubt heading into the match. Beyond a slight doubt over Duckens Nazon, an unused substitute against Scotland, Haiti manager Sébastien Migné doesn’t have any issues to contend with. Given how close it was against the Scots, he could pick the same team for this match as well.

The main debate within Haiti’s lineup centers on a single position. The main question is whether Dallas FC’s Louicious Deedson keeps his starting place on the right flank — he was replaced after 61 minutes by Josué Casimir in the opening match and could be in danger of losing his starting role.

Haiti’s predicted lineup in a 4-4-2 formation: Placide; Arcus, Adé, Delcroix, Expérience; Deedson, Jacques, Bellegarde, Providence; Isidor, Pierrot.

Score Prediction

Based on the significant talent disparity between the two nations and Brazil’s improved form as their opening match progressed, the expected outcome heavily favors the Seleção, with a final score prediction of Brazil 2, Haiti 0.

Match Details

The match will be played at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Friday, June 19, with kickoff scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time, or 1:30 a.m. British Summer Time on June 20.

How to Watch

Viewers in the United States can watch the match on the FOX Network, fuboTV, Telemundo, Telemundo Deportes En Vivo, or FOX One. In Canada, coverage is available on TSN+, TSN4, TSN5, RDS, and the RDS App. Mexican viewers can tune in via ViX Mexico and TUDN, while viewers in the United Kingdom can watch on ITV1, ITVX, STV Scotland, and the STV Player.

What’s at Stake for Group C

With Scotland sitting atop Group C following their own opening win and Morocco having drawn with Brazil in the tournament’s early going, a victory for the Seleção on Friday would be a critical step toward repositioning themselves in contention for a favorable finish in the group. For Haiti, even a respectable defeat against one of the tournament’s traditional powerhouses would represent a meaningful marker of progress for a program competing at football’s biggest stage for the first time in more than five decades — while an upset, however unlikely given the historical and statistical gap between the sides, would rank among the most stunning results of the tournament’s opening rounds.

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Pathfinders, an UK executive search and board advisory firms led by Bruce and Penelope Wright is reported to have suffered a significant cyberattack in which intruders accessed and exfiltrated confidential candidate records, including succession plans and compensation data tied to some of its largest corporate clients.

The breach is notable less for its scale than for the sensitivity of what was taken. Executive search firms sit on some of the most closely guarded information in corporate life — confidential dossiers on who might next run a major company, what they are paid, and which directors are quietly being moved on. A leak of that material strikes directly at the discretion these firms sell.

What is known

Although significant amounts of data from Pathfinder has been published on the darkweb, the company has done no disclosure of the breach and none of the affected clients and individuals have been notified.

People familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss it, said the intrusion appeared to have begun with compromised credentials which were then used to reach the firm’s candidate-management system. The attackers are believed to have had access for several weeks before detection — a dwell time the firm has not publicly confirmed.

A ransomware group operating under the name “BlackVellum” has claimed responsibility on the dark web. Whether a ransom had been demanded or paid is not known. The claim could not be independently verified, and attribution at this stage remains tentative.

Whose data was exposed

The exposed material include candidate CVs, references, psychometric and leadership assessments, interview notes, and compensation details, as well as confidential board succession plans prepared for client companies.

For candidates, the exposure carries a particular sting: there is more than one senior cybersecurity executive whose personal data is now in circulation on the dark web and several other candidates had off-market conversations their current employers do not know about. For client companies, the leak risks revealing internal succession thinking — including which incumbents are being lined up to replace, and on what terms.

Regulatory and legal exposure

There is no indication that Pathfinder had notified the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator. Under UK GDPR, organisations must report a qualifying personal-data breach within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and can face fines of up to 4 percent of global annual turnover for serious failings. Legal specialists said the firm could also face claims from affected individuals and contractual disputes with clients whose data-handling expectations were not met.

The incident is likely to draw scrutiny of what security assurances Pathfinder gave clients in its engagement contracts, and whether its actual controls matched them — a gap that has proven costly for other professional-services firms.

What the experts say

Security analysts said the case fits a wider pattern in which attackers increasingly target professional-services firms not for their own sake but as a route to their high-value clients. “A search firm is a concentration point,” one cyber risk consultant said. “Compromise one boutique and you potentially gain intelligence on dozens of major companies at once.”

Others pointed to the supply-chain entry point as the recurring weak link. Smaller advisory firms often hold exceptionally sensitive data while running leaner security operations than the corporations they serve, making them an attractive target.

What remains unresolved

Key questions are still open: how the credentials were obtained, exactly how long the attackers were inside, the full list of affected clients, and whether the stolen files will be published.

Manchester has been named the leading UK city outside London to start a business, according to new research from National Women’s Enterprise Week, in findings that point to the growing pull of regional “hidden hubs” for women building companies away from the capital.

The survey of 1,000 female entrepreneurs found that 41 per cent named Manchester as either the best or second-best UK city outside London to launch a venture, with one in four (27 per cent) putting it in top spot. Birmingham followed on 14 per cent, with Liverpool on 5 per cent.

The picture that emerges is of women-led enterprise increasingly being built beyond the M25, with founders citing lower costs, greater flexibility and stronger regional opportunity as reasons to stay put. It is a trend already visible elsewhere in the country, with female entrepreneurship booming in the North East as well as across the North West.

National Women’s Enterprise Week was founded by Alison Cork MBE as a UK-wide campaign to help close the gender gap in business ownership. Around one in five UK businesses is currently woman-led, a figure that has climbed from 16 per cent in 2018 but still lags well behind the ambition set out in the government-backed Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which set a target of nearly 600,000 more women founders by 2030.

The research, carried out by Sapio Research, set out to test whether funding, visibility and networks are keeping pace with where women-led businesses are actually being built. While London remains a critical centre for finance and dealmaking, the findings suggest that London-centric assumptions about growth risk disadvantaging founders who are choosing, deliberately, to build viable businesses elsewhere.

More than half (52 per cent) of women entrepreneurs agree that building a business outside London offers greater opportunity, while the same proportion say lower costs are among the top benefits of basing a company beyond the capital.

Yet the old hierarchy has not gone away. Nearly six in ten (58 per cent) agree that businesses based in London are taken more seriously than those outside it, and 61 per cent believe a London address signals that a business is well-established or successful. Perception, in other words, has not caught up with practice.

If anything, that bias runs deeper among those writing the cheques. A separate survey of 200 business investors who have backed UK firms found that 78 per cent agree London-based businesses are taken more seriously, while 80 per cent say a London address signals success. More than half (52 per cent) have at some point required or encouraged a company they invest in to relocate to the capital.

Among women founders based outside London, more than a third (37 per cent) say they have felt pressure to move in order to grow. The majority, though, have no wish to leave: 76 per cent say that, if funding, visibility and opportunity were equal across the UK, they would still choose to base their business exactly where it is today.

That tension, between where capital expects success to happen and where founders are choosing to build it, sits at the heart of the funding debate. It is a theme that runs through wider concerns about the gender finance gap, including evidence that women founders secure 25 per cent less than men at exit.

Alison Cork, founder of National Women’s Enterprise Week, said Manchester topping the list was significant, but that the bigger story lay in what it revealed about the changing geography of British enterprise.

“Women are building ambitious businesses in cities, towns and communities across the country, not just in London,” she said. “The opportunity is already there, but visibility, networks and investment have not always kept pace.

“What this research reveals is a tension between where founders see opportunity and where many people still believe success is supposed to happen. We need to stop thinking of regional growth as an alternative to London and start recognising it as a major driver of the UK’s entrepreneurial economy.”

That argument aligns with the direction of national policy. The government’s Women-Led High-Growth Enterprise Taskforce has likewise pressed for investment and support to reach female founders wherever they are based, rather than concentrating opportunity in the South East.

The research also underlines how much support remains out of reach. Only 35 per cent of women entrepreneurs say they have all the access and backing they need, while 42 per cent say they have some but could do with more. A lack of funding and low visibility are the joint top challenges founders face in growing a business from their current location, each cited by 27 per cent, echoing the squeeze that has seen some female entrepreneurs take on second jobs as 2025 pressures grow.

The findings are being released to coincide with National Women’s Enterprise Week’s Own It: Speed Mentoring for Female Founders event on 19 June 2026, which is built around improving access to practical support, mentoring, networks and visibility for women founders across the UK.

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.

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Americans’ contributions to their 401(k) savings accounts hit record highs in 2025, according to a new report from Vanguard. 

Among employees with active 401(k) accounts in both December 2024 and December 2025, median account balances increased by 27%, according to the report, titled How America Saves 2026. 

Of those same participants, 94% saw an increase in their account balances, reflecting both a rise in contributions and strong returns from markets, according to the report. 

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People review tax forms on a laptop computer. (iStock)

The average account balance for a Vanguard 401(k) was $167,970 in 2025, a near $20,000 increase from the 2024 average of $148,153. The median account balance, meanwhile, also increased year over year, rising from $38,176 in 2024 to $44,115 in 2025. 

One factor the report cites as a potential impact on the higher contributions is a shift in automatic employee enrollment. 

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Some employers have shifted to automatically enrolling employees in 401k plans, with the share of Vanguard-defined contribution plans using automatic enrollment sitting at 61% in 2025 compared with just 10% in 2006. 

By reframing an employee’s decision into opting out, rather than voluntarily opting in, employers encourage significantly stronger participation in retirement plans, according to the report. 

“With an autopilot design, individuals are automatically enrolled into the plan, their deferral rates are automatically increased each year, and their contributions are automatically invested in a balanced investment strategy. In such a plan, the decision to save is framed negatively: ‘Quit the plan if you’d like.’ And ’doing nothing; leads to participation in the plan and investment of assets in a long-term retirement portfolio,” the report states.

American flags on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, on Aug. 18, 2025. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Employees deferred a similar percentage of their total incomes into plans in 2025 when compared with 2024, though deferral rates have broadly trended up in the last decade.

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The average deferral was 7.6% of an employee’s income in 2025, the same as it was in 2024, per the report. The median rate was 6.6% in 2025 compared with 6.7% in 2024. 

A quarter of all participants had a deferral rate of over 10% of their incomes. That compared with just 20% of participants deferring more than a tenth of their income in 2016, the report noted.  

A younger person reviews bills on their desk and inputs them into a computer. (Getty Images)

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The report wasn’t all positive. Hardship withdrawals increased for the fourth straight year, rising to 6% in 2025 from 5% the previous year. While the report cited potential pressures from inflation and other economic challenges, it also noted that a recent streamlining in the process to apply for hardship withdrawals has “made retirement assets more accessible in times of need.”