Bellingham shines and guarantees Group L leadership for England

Jude Bellingham was thrilled to see England achieve their first World Cup goal as they took top spot in Group L with a 2-0 victory over a resilient Panama team. Thomas Tuchel's team struggled in the first 60 minutes at the New York and New Jersey Stadium, with Marcus Rashford missing some good opportunities. However, Bellingham made the difference when he scored the first goal in the 62nd minute, finding the bottom left corner following a corner taken by Bukayo Saka.

He even became the waiter of the second goal, which came five minutes later, when his shot was deflected into the back of the net by Harry Kane, who became England's top scorer in the history of World Cups, with 11 goals, surpassing Gary Lineker (10). At 22 years and 363 days, Bellingham became the youngest England player to score and assist in a World Cup match since 1966, the fourth in total in the team's history.


With this victory, England, who had already secured their place in the round of 16 before the game, finished at the top of Group L and will face the Democratic Republic of Congo in the next phase. After the match, Bellingham commented: "The first job has been completed. We came here to do it in stages, and now we have achieved that first objective: passing the stage and also coming first. We knew the level we wanted to reach and we achieved it in the second half. With each game, we have to improve, and it's up to us to achieve that. The assist was a good combination of moves, and the World Cup goal record is everything Harry Kane deserves."

On the other hand, Panama leaves the World Cup with three consecutive defeats, but they still gave England a hard time. The Central American team becomes only the sixth to lose the first six games in World Cup history, with 50% of teams achieving this feat in this edition (along with Haiti and Iraq). Thomas Christiansen's team defended brilliantly for most of the game, trying to counterattack whenever possible, but ended up conceding just after kick-off time.

In an interview with RPC Radio after the game, Panamanian striker José Luis Rodriguez said: "I'm very happy with the team's performance. In the end, we didn't get the results we expected, but we competed until the end. We didn't give up. Maybe in the first games, we need to be more clinical in front of goal, like we were in this game. But I'm very happy with the way we played in the matches, because, at the end of the day, we fought, we didn't give up, and that's what takes us forward. We try to close the spaces well and play in the counterattack. Obviously, in the second half we decided to take a little more risk, but in the end it's football, and I want to thank my teammates for fighting until the end.

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