Panamanians came to blows at the training ground.

Wattman shoved Rodriguez in the chest. At 35, after being benched by the national team for six years, this veteran threw the first punch during a training session that was already a lost cause. The 27-year-old Rodriguez, nicknamed "Puma," had been to Russia at 19 and couldn't take it, turning to retaliate. Teammates rushed in to hold him back, but Wattman was still struggling, jabbing his fingers through the human wall at the other guy.

Panama had lost two straight, scoring zero goals. 0-1 to Ghana, with Yirenkyi poking one through in the 5th minute of stoppage time; 0-1 to Croatia, where Budimir found the net. Against Ghana, they had 62% possession, 11 shots, 4 on target, and an xG of 0.73. Stat sheets laid out, the data looked polished to a shine; the scoreboard flipped, and they lost their shirts completely. In the 67th minute against Croatia, Panama fired three straight shots, all denied by Livakovic on the goal line. The ball just wouldn't go in, so the pent-up frustration boiled over among teammates.

Head coach Thomas Christiansen was pressed by reporters about the altercation, dropping this line: "What happened today in training, this is a normal situation." Just another day at practice. That same day, the Dane was griping about the World Cup's new ranking rules. His team was mathematically eliminated before the final round even started, not even given a theoretical reprieve. Six years of honing his PR speak, every word pressed smooth. When asked about the final match against England, his phrasing was just as watertight: "Now we have the last game against England, a good way to finish a World Cup if it goes our way." A meaningless dead-rubber match, packaged as a "nice finish." He'd sat in Panama's hot seat for six years, the longest-tenured coach in history, and knew exactly how to drape a fig leaf over a locker room mess.

The scuffle between Wattman and Rodriguez, stripped bare, was pure survival anxiety tangling together. Wattman hadn't received a national team call-up for six straight years, from 2013 to 2019, his prime years from 22 to 28 completely forgotten. It wasn't until the 4th minute of stoppage time in the 2025 CONCACAF Nations League semifinal, scoring a last-minute winner against the US, that he clawed himself back from the dust. At 35, he set foot on a World Cup pitch for the first time. Every touch he takes now is counting down his career. Rodriguez doesn't have to count down. He was in the 2018 World Cup squad at 19, has 55 national team appearances at 27, and has bounced around Europe with Red Star Belgrade, Alavés, and Sporting Gijón. When the fire of elimination burned, the ease of youth and the desperation of age collided, and any pretense of teammate chemistry vanished.

In 2018, England beat Panama 6-1. Kane had a hat trick. Down 0-6, in the 78th minute, Felipe Baloy scored Panama's first-ever World Cup goal. He cried. So did the bench. Getting thumped by six goals, and they cried like they'd won. A nation of 4.6 million people, whose entire population can't fill a single World Cup final stadium, had to swallow that bitterness alone. Eight years later, the same national team returned to the World Cup with seven veterans from 2018. In the final round of qualifying, they went five wins, one draw, zero losses, picking up 12 points, scoring 12 goals and conceding 3, climbing out of a deep hole where they had just 6 points after four rounds. At the tournament, they had the possession, the shots, even the three consecutive strikes in the 67th minute. But the goal still eluded them.

Tomorrow at MetLife Stadium, 82,500 seats, this year's World Cup final venue. If it's full, the number inside equals about 1/56 of Panama's total population. Tuchel will be plotting his rotation on the other side; England needs a win to lock down the top spot in the group. One side is saving strength for the knockout rounds, while the other is tearing itself apart on the training ground. The turf at MetLife will bear two completely different kinds of gravity tomorrow.

2018: three losses, 2 goals for, 11 against, a goal difference of -9. 2026: two games played, zero goals, 2 conceded. That goal Baloy scored eight years ago when they were down 0-6 remains the only goal in Panama's World Cup history. Tomorrow against England, these guys will still be hoping for another miracle. But the English will probably deny them even that sixty seconds of dignity.