The weather gods seemed to take pity on the fans in the stands and eased off the rain right before the opening ceremonies of the game.\n<\/p>\n
Before the game kicked off, there was a minute of silence for the victims of the\u00a0two devastating earthquakes in Venezuela on Wednesday<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Croatia\u2019s Nikola Vlasic was nearly the first to break the deadlock in the 17th minute, but his long-range effort glanced the outside of the right goal post.\n<\/p>\n Croatia\u2019s sustained pressure eventually paid off in the 31st minute when Petar Sukic found himself with space to shoot from range, becoming the first player to score against Ghana this tournament.\n<\/p>\n Ghana\u2019s star winger Antoine Semenyo nearly found the equalizer for Ghana in the 40th minute.\n <\/p>\n Ghana came out of the half time break looking to take more chances, with Semenyo spearheading the attempts.\n<\/p>\n Meanwhile in New Jersey, England\u2019s Jude Belllingham scored for England off a set piece to lift them back on top of the group.\n<\/p>\n England quickly doubled their lead with captain Harry Kane five minutes later.\n<\/p>\n Ghana thought they scored an equalizer in the 73rd minute through Derrick Luckassen volley from a set piece, but the goal was immediately ruled out due to the referees believing that a player in an offside position interfering with play. The Ghanaian fans\u2019 cheers for the goal changed to chants for VAR \u2014 the video assistant referee \u2014 and the referee went to the pitchside monitor to review the call. When he overturned his decision and awarded the goal the Ghana fans were in raptures.\n<\/p>\n Croatia nearly took the lead again in the 82nd minute, but Ghana goalkeeper Benjamin Asare was able to save Mario Pasalic\u2019s shot.\n<\/p>\n Asare wasn\u2019t able to reach Nikola Vlasic\u2019s header from the resulting corner, with captain Luka Modri\u0107 \u2014 who looked at least 10 years younger than his 40 the entire game \u2014\u00a0 taking the corner.\n<\/p>\n Ghana fans\u2019 agony was compounded when Semenyo went down clutching his ankle, but he returned to the field to see out the game.\n<\/p>\n The results of both games put England in first, headed to play in Atlanta on July 1. Croatia finished second and will take on the second-placed team in Group K in Toronto on July 2. Ghana in third has to wait and see which team it will face and where in the round of 32.\n<\/p>\n Next up in South Philly is the big one,a round of 16 match on the Fourth of July. The matchup will be between the winners of the round of 36 game between Germany and Paraguay in Boston on June 29, and the matchup between France and Sweden on June 30 in New Jersey.\n<\/p>\n France played in Philly\u2019s third World Cup game,\u00a0winning 3-0 against Iraq in the longest weather delayed game in World Cup history<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Philly got a taste of what this game could look like last year, during the\u00a0FIFA Club World Cup game between Chelsea and Palmeiras<\/a>. Chelsea went on to win that tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Croatia come out on top in Philly, behind England in group The weather gods seemed to take pity on the fans in the stands and eased off the rain right before the opening ceremonies of the game. Before the game kicked off, there was a minute of silence for the victims of the\u00a0two devastating earthquakes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11573],"tags":[20729,952,1131,20730,1069,1857,20039,539,4140,919,21434],"class_list":["post-31187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philadelphia-breaking-news","tag-croatia","tag-cup","tag-final","tag-ghana","tag-group","tag-match","tag-phillys","tag-stage","tag-tops","tag-world","tag-world-cup-2026"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/whyy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP26178824850307-scaled-1.jpg",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Philadelphia Viral News<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Croatia come out on top in Philly, behind England in group The weather gods seemed to take pity on the fans in the stands and eased off the rain right before the opening ceremonies of the game. Before the game kicked off, there was a minute of silence for the victims of the\u00a0two devastating earthquakes…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31189,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31187\/revisions\/31189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}