{"id":4161,"date":"2026-06-19T07:32:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=4161"},"modified":"2026-06-19T07:32:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:32:58","slug":"world-cup-2026-thomas-tuchel-throws-first-pitch-as-england-enjoy-downtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=4161","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Thomas Tuchel throws first pitch as England enjoy downtime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Thomas Tuchel threw the first pitch at the home of baseball team Kansas City Royals as his England squad enjoyed some downtime after winning their opening game at the World Cup.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Manager Tuchel was joined by captain Harry Kane and defenders Dan Burn and Djed Spence at Kauffman Stadium as he completed the ceremonial throw just over 24 hours after England beat <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cp36z3qpzrxt\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Croatia 4-2 in Dallas.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kane, who scored two goals in the win over Croatia, posted on social media about the trip.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Great recovery day with the boys at the baseball,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Would love to give batting a go one day! Thanks for having us @Royals.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Bayern Munich forward played the whole match against Croatia and did not take part in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Sporting KC which was for members of the squad who needed game time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ivan Toney and Morgan Rogers were among the scorers as England recorded a comprehensive 5-1 victory over the Major League Soccer side in a practice match on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The game, played at England&#8217;s Swope Soccer Village training facility, featured the players not used in Wednesday&#8217;s win over Croatia and the squad members who did not play significant minutes in Dallas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Toney scored a hat-trick while Aston Villa duo Rogers and Ollie Watkins were also on target as England ran out comfortable winners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Burn, Jordan Henderson, Eberechi Eze, Marc Guehi, Kobbie Mainoo, Djed Spence and Jarell Quansah were among the players also involved in the training game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The game was broken up into two halves of around 25 minutes each.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BBC Sport revealed on Tuesday that the Football Association had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cm2rx0dl411o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">arranged the friendly<\/a> to get minutes into certain players&#8217; legs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having arrived back from Dallas at around 10.30pm local time on Wednesday, England players were afforded most of Thursday off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Players were allowed to see family and friends immediately after the Group L game against Croatia, and loved ones were given access into the camp on Thursday to spend time with the team before they start preparations for next Tuesday&#8217;s game against Ghana in Boston (21:00 BST).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Tuchel threw the first pitch at the home of baseball team Kansas City Royals as his England squad enjoyed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}