{"id":498605,"date":"2025-10-14T16:55:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=498605"},"modified":"2025-10-14T16:55:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:55:26","slug":"england-secures-2026-world-cup-spot-trashing-latvia-5-0","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/england-secures-2026-world-cup-spot-trashing-latvia-5-0\/","title":{"rendered":"England secures 2026 World Cup spot, trashing Latvia 5-0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>England officially booked their place at the 2026 World Cup after cruising to a dominant 5\u20130 win away to Latvia in the eighth round of Group K qualifying. The victory ensured the Three Lions\u2019 eighth consecutive appearance at the tournament, as they extended their perfect record to six wins from six matches and built a seven-point cushion over second-placed Albania.<\/p>\n<p>Tomas Tuchel&#8217;s men controlled the match from start to finish, breaking the deadlock in the 26th minute when Anthony Gordon latched onto a through ball and fired a precise strike into the bottom left corner. Just before halftime, Harry Kane doubled the lead with a thunderous shot into the bottom right, before converting a penalty in first-half stoppage time to make it 3\u20130.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">England book their spot at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Their quest for a first World Cup since 1966&#8230; \u23f3 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VKimJCtkOi\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/VKimJCtkOi<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 B\/R Football (@brfootball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brfootball\/status\/1978198253729366187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">October 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Latvia\u2019s night worsened in the 58th minute when defender Maksims Tonisevs inadvertently turned the ball into his own net, giving England a fourth goal. Eberechi Eze capped off the performance in the 86th minute with a calm finish to seal the 5\u20130 victory.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time in the other game of the group, Serbia survived a scare in Andorra. After falling behind, they rallied to a 2\u20131 win that kept their qualifying hopes alive. With the result, Serbia sit third with ten points, while Andorra remain bottom with just a single point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>England officially booked their place at the 2026 World Cup after cruising to a dominant 5\u20130 win away to Latvia in the eighth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":498607,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17518,16877],"news_category":[14236,14235,16715],"gn_keywords":[17897,18341],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"The Three Lions got their eight consecutive pass for the World Cup finals","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/498605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/498605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498608,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/498605\/revisions\/498608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498605"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=498605"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=498605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}