Article by Aurelian Botezatu – Published Monday, 08 June 2026, 15:27 / Updated Monday, 08 June 2026 15:29
At the friendly with new zealand (1-0), the names of England stars appeared on the scoreboard at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium misspelled, reversed or incomplete.
Americans' ignorance of soccer is proverbial. But in the friendly England – New Zealand they exceeded all expectations! They messed up the British names to such an extent that of the first eleven Thomas Tuchel fielded, only one, goalkeeper Jordan Pickford's, appeared correctly spelled on the scoreboard at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium.
Jarrell Rashford and Ollie Kane for Marcus Rashford and Ollie Watkins
The rest, a disaster. In seven of the other ten players, combinations of first names from some with last names from others are observed. Thus, Marc O'Reilly, Marcus Stones, Jordan Guehi, Morgan Anderson, Ollie Kane, Djed Bellingham and Jarrell Rashford appeared instead of Marc Guehi, Marcus Rashford, Jordan Henderson, Morgan Rodgers, Ollie Watkins, Djed Spence and Jarrell Quansah respectively.
The Americans made “ciulama” out of the name of the English
The case of “John Consa” was even worse, being a mix-up between “John Stones” and “Ezri Konsa”, the latter's last name being misspelled. As for captain Harry Kane, who scored the winning goal in the 45+2 minute, and Kobbie Mainoo, they only appeared on the scoreboard with their first names!
BBC: “The experiments must end here and now!”
England's performance was not up to par either. Tuchel played the whole game, but the game was not to his liking: “In the first half, we were not in our positions and freestyled a little too much.
We crossed and shot a lot from distance – that's not normally our style. We played a lot of long balls and abused long passes. That was not part of our training for the last four days.”
The British journalists, in turn, asked the German technician to stop the experiments. “This was a practice match. England and Tuchel must now get serious!” captioned the BBC: “The experiments must end here and now!”.
