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Croatia are aiming for its first tournament trophy as it plays Spain in the final of the Nations League in Rotterdam. Croatia finished third in the World Cup last year and runners-up in 2018, and winning the Nations League would cap 37-year-old Luka Modric’s international career in what would be the Real Madrid midfielder’s 166th game for his country. Spain coach Luis de la Fuente can win a trophy in only his fourth game since taking over in December following Spain’s World Cup round-of-16 exit to Morocco under Luis Enrique. Spain’s last tournament win came at the 2012 European Championship. Earlier, host nation the Netherlands played Italy in the third-place game in Enschede. Here is everything you need to know. When is the final? Croatia vs Spain kicks off at 7.45pm BST in Rotterdam, Netherlands. TV channel and live stream The Nations League final will be broadcast live in the UK on Channel 4. Viewers can also stream the match live via the Channel 4 website and app. Who finished third? Italy claimed the consolation bronze medals at the Nations League finals, and added to a disappointing week for hosts the Netherlands, as they edged the Dutch 3-2 in Sunday’s third place playoff tie at the Twente Stadium. Federico Dimarco thrashed the ball home at the far post in the sixth minute and Davide Frattesi doubled the score from in front of goal in the 20th minute to give Italy a comfortable halftime lead. But the Dutch launched a concerted second half comeback, making three attacking changes at the break, laying siege to Italy’s goal and seeing Steven Bergwijn pull a goal back in the 68th minute. Federico Chiesa restored the two goal advantage at the end of a 73rd minute counterattack but there was an exciting conclusion as Georginio Wijnaldum got a second for the Dutch in the 89th. But even though nine minutes of stoppage time was added on, Italy held out under home pressure for victory. Read More Italy finish third in Nations League after beating the Netherlands Joselu fires Spain to Nations League final with late winner against Italy Gareth Southgate facing ‘complicated’ decision on Man City stars for Malta game Gareth Southgate undecided on whether to select Man City stars against Malta Focus on Republic of Ireland’s opponents Greece and the threat they may pose Home support can be Malta’s 12th man against England – ex-player David Carabott

Police say the three people arrested - one a boy of 14 - were suspected Islamist sympathisers.

Britain’s bond market is approaching an inflection point, with inflation data and a Bank of England decision set

Same-sex relationships are not legally recognised in Poland and gay couples cannot adopt children.

Brexit is partly to blame for stubbornly high inflation levels seen in the UK, former Bank of England

BlackRock Inc. is trying its hand at potentially getting the first spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded fund launched in the US.

WASHINGTON The United States has imposed visa restrictions on Uganda officials after the African nation passed an anti-LGBTQ

Tyson Fury has claimed that the UFC has offered him a ‘hybrid fight’ with Jon Jones. WBC heavyweight boxing champion Fury has been linked with Jones, who holds the UFC heavyweight title, in recent weeks, since claiming that he would win a fight with the American. Fury, 34, has also long been linked with Francis Ngannou – Jones’s predecessor as UFC heavyweight champion – and the Briton has now addressed the chances of either bout materialising. “I’ve been in talks with Francis Ngannou for a hybrid fight,” Fury said on a Twitter Spaces stream on Friday (16 June). “There’s talks of me and Jon Jones doing a hybrid fight, as we talk right now. I received an offer from the UFC yesterday. “So, you never know what’s going to happen. The future’s bright for sure, and there’s a lot of options out there. “It seems, at the moment, I’m struggling to get an actual boxing opponent. Mauricio Sulaiman, the president of the WBC (World Boxing Council), did an interview on a podcast recently, and he said: ‘Tyson’s a victim of his own success. He’s that good, people don’t want to fight him. They’d rather fight someone else.’ “That’s what I’m experiencing right now. I think I’ve called out everybody in the top 15 in the heavyweight division in the last six months, and I’m still without an opponent, as we speak today.” Fury last fought in December, retaining the WBC heavyweight title with a TKO win against Derek Chisora, whom he had already beaten twice in the past. The “Gypsy King” was then in talks to fight unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, but negotiations fell apart in March. Meanwhile, Jones last fought in March, returning to the UFC after a three-year absence to move up a weight class and fight for the vacant heavyweight belt. The 35-year-old submitted Ciryl Gane in the first round to claim the gold. Jones is a former multiple-time light-heavyweight champion in the UFC, and he is seen by many fans and pundits as the greatest fighter in mixed martial arts history. Click here to subscribe to The Independent’s Sport YouTube channel for all the latest sports videos. Read More Joe Rogan is right: Tyson Fury has ‘no chance in hell’ against Jon Jones Conor McGregor denies allegation he sexually assaulted a woman at NBA Finals Nate Diaz ‘looked like he was dying’ in training for Jake Paul fight, sparring partner says UFC fan favourite Max Holloway to return with ‘Korean Zombie’ fight in Singapore

Max Holloway will fight the “Korean Zombie”, Chan Sung Jung, in the main event of UFC Singapore in August. Holloway, a former featherweight champion, has long desired a bout with Sung Jung, most recently calling for the fight after beating Arnold Allen in April. Holloway, 31, outpointed Allen in a Fight Night main event in Kansas City to bounce back from his third loss to Alexander Volkanovski, who took the featherweight title from the Hawaiian in 2019 and has retained the belt against him twice. Sung Jung was also beaten by the reigning champion in his most recent fight, suffering a fourth-round TKO loss to Volkanovski last April. Holloway and Sung Jung are now set to meet in a Fight Night main event at Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday 26 August. Holloway and “Zombie” are both fan favourites, with each having taken on a ‘who’s-who’ of featherweights in the UFC. While Sung Jung, 36, has a somewhat patchy record in the promotion, Holloway has been largely dominant over the last decade – although Volkanovski has been a thorn in his side. The Australian and Dustin Poirier – who beat Holloway with the interim lightweight title on the line in 2019 – are the only fighters to defeat the Hawaiian since 2013. Holloway won the UFC featherweight title by stopping Jose Aldo in June 2017 and retained the gold against the icon six months later – with another TKO. “Blessed” also holds victories over Allen, reigning interim champion Yair Rodriguez, Brian Ortega, Calvin Kattar, Cub Swanson, and former UFC champions Charles Oliveira, Frankie Edgar and Anthony Pettis. The news that Holloway vs Sung Jung would headline in Singapore was accompanied by two further announcements by the UFC. The promotion revealed that Cody Sandhagen would face Umar Nurmagomedov in a Fight Night main event in Nashville on 5 August, and that Ciryl Gane vs Sergey Spivak would be the headline bout at UFC Paris on 2 September. Click here to subscribe to The Independent’s Sport YouTube channel for all the latest sports videos. Read More Conor McGregor denies allegation he sexually assaulted a woman at NBA Finals Conor McGregor announces fiancee Dee Devlin is pregnant with couple’s fourth child Vettori vs Cannonier live stream: How to watch UFC Fight Night online and on TV this weekend

Britons became less pessimistic about inflation in the second quarter as energy prices continued to fall, according to

The Bank of England is a step closer to launching its own digital currency after a yearlong project

“I live in the middle of nowhere, literally in the woods. It’s like freakin’ Hogwarts out here,” Modestas Bukauskas says, sounding distinctly more like a Londoner than a Lithuanian. “There’s a bit near my house with no signal, and right before I was about to drive in there, my manager gives me a video call. It was late at night, I freakin’ swerve to the side of the road, completely disregarding that there were about two cars behind me. My manager goes: ‘Bro, you’re fighting in Australia in two weeks – in the UFC.’ I literally broke down into tears.” It was as if the Lithuanian-born Briton had entered a mirrored reality; one year earlier, Bukauskas had been shedding tears over a call from his manager, but the news was altogether less positive. In late 2021, the development was that Bukauskas had been cut by the UFC. Sitting at home recovering from a serious knee injury, and reflecting on a third successive defeat, Bukauskas had in fact seen the news on Twitter before his manager could even confirm it. In the year that ensued, Bukauskas was out of the Octagon, but he was still in a cage. “The amount of pain and struggle, drinking in bed...” The 29-year-old cuts himself off. “I just so many hard f***ing memories, having to go through the deepest and darkest times. I don’t remember a time when I was acting myself. It just seemed like I was in a picture with no colour. Everything was black and white. Mentally, I was broken. I had a lot of things to fix before I could even move forward.” First to be fixed was the knee. Then, somehow, Bukauskus was indeed able to move forward. At first, it might have seemed like moving backwards. In 2019, before joining the UFC, Bukauskas had won and retained the Cage Warriors light-heavyweight title; after leaving the UFC, he turned down other offers and opted to return to the London-based promotion. Perhaps, unknowingly, Bukauskas was shining the glass of that mirrored reality. Within two months, and two fights, he had once again secured Cage Warriors’ light-heavyweight crown. And then came the call – on the side of the road, at the opening of the forest, in the middle of nowhere. “I was absolutely elated,” Bukauskas tells The Independent. “After I got off the phone with my manager, I was playing some, like, war music in the car – a remix of the Witcher video-game music – full blast for the last five minutes back to my house. I was screaming with just... fierceness. I got home and felt kind of dizzy, it was weird. I didn’t feel like I was there. “I went upstairs to tell my step-mum, and she was kind of worried, because I was almost out of breath. Then my dad was chilling in bed after a hard day, and he was like (Bukauskas taps into a Lithuanian accent): ‘What the hell do you need to get me out of bed for?’ I brought them downstairs and told them, ‘We’re back in the UFC,’ just hugged them and broke down in tears again. Over the last couple of years, that’s probably one of the happiest moments I’ve had, just me with my family, hugging each other in our sitting room.” Bukauskas’ father, in particular, understands the struggles that the sport entails. In the 1980s, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gintas Bukauskas learned to fight on the streets of occupied Lithuania, before going on to work as a mixed martial arts coach. Gintas brought his family to Britain when Modestas was three years old and first introduced his son to combat sports two years later. “I just remember vividly that he would show me some kicks, some moves,” Modestas recalls. “At that age, you’re just like, ‘That looks cool! Look at that kick!’ Literally about a week into showing me some stuff, he goes (Bukauskas dips into that Lithuanian accent again): ‘Okay, now you must train hard.’ My childhood was thrown into strict regime and training. There was kickboxing, sambo. I kind of branched into different sports later – county-level tennis, I went to high school in the US for a couple of years and played basketball and American football – and I took a break from full-on martial arts from 12 to 18. But as a teenager I still became a four-time British kickboxing champion.” Bukauskas’ father was there through it all, and he was in his son’s corner when the 29-year-old’s journey brought him back to the UFC this February, as Bukauskas took on Tyson Pedro on the Australian’s own turf. Fighting in Perth on two weeks’ notice, Bukauskas emerged as a decision winner against Pedro over three rounds, greeting the revelation of the judges’ scorecards with a roar of relief in the RAC Arena. “This is where everything can start to make a solid story,” Bukauskas says. “It’s by no means finished, we’ve got many more things to do, but I’m starting to build a proper comeback story.” That story continues on Saturday, when Bukauskas takes on Zac Pauga at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Bukauskas might live off the map, but he is now firmly back on the UFC’s. Read More UFC 2023 schedule: Every major fight happening this year UFC rankings: The Independent’s pound-for-pound fighters list Former Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler opponent makes prediction for UFC clash MMA fighter skips press conference due to fear of heights Conor McGregor announces fiancee is pregnant with couple’s fourth child Conor McGregor offers update on Miami Heat mascot after punching incident