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You may have missed … here’s a withering critique of Fifa’s handling of the Folarin Balogun red card case by Barney Ronay:
Frites 4 Cheats 1. Tintin 4 Tonto 1. Some good news here, perhaps. It seems Gianni Infantino was right after all. Football has united the world. Mainly football has united the world in gleeful satisfaction at the USA exiting its own World Cup tournament as soon as possible following the great and glorious Donald Trump Mr-Fix-It intervention.
This was the tone of the immediate global reaction to the USA’s invertebrate defeat in Seattle on Monday night, soundly beaten by a righteous and highly motivated Belgium: land of beer, waffles and sporting vigilante justice. Ghent 4 Bent 1. Antwerp 4 A twerp 1. Mayonnaise 4 May-have-interfered-in-due-process 1. I can go on. How long have you got?
Over the past six decades, Morocco have achieved several performance milestones for Africa at the World Cup. The first country to qualify directly, for the 1970 finals in Mexico, they returned in 1986 and became the first team from the continent to make the last 16, then made that impressive semi-final run in Qatar four years ago.
Even if the Atlas Lions fail to match their 2022 performance, by losing to France on Thursday, they have made tournament history as the first African team to reach the quarter-finals at successive World Cups.