Today marked the begining of the end for the group stage. Groups A and B played their final games, which is always a cause for drama because most of these games will decide who advances to the Round of 16. There was an enormous amount of people claiming that the refs and the use of VAR was very one-sided in almost every match, which goes to show how big these games were today.
Group B went batshit crazy on Monday, but when the dust settled and the VAR screen had been flicked off, nothing had changed over the course of 90 overly dramatic minutes in Russia: Spain finish top and will play Russia, Portugal finish runners-up and take on Uruguay. One major talking point is that the European champions could’ve been preparing for that game without Cristiano Ronaldo, who was given a VAR-inspired yellow card for an off-the-ball elbow.
Australia: the land of Vegemite, beautiful beaches, plenty of animals that want to kill you, a plethora of other animals that likely won’t kill you but could if they wanted to and the mighty Socceroos.
It turns out Australia is home to animal pitch invaders as well. More specifically, it's home to a pitch-invading kangaroo.
Let’s be honest here. Panama was bad on Sunday. Really bad. Los Canaleros embarrassed Concacaf and every Concacaf nation that didn’t qualify, although no specific nations immediately come to mind. The 6-1 loss for Panama vs England was the worst performance of any team thus far at the World Cup.
A specter is haunting the World Cup — the specter of Liga MX club Cruz Azul.
El Tri are in great form after defeating South Korea 2-1 and they are currently at the top of the table in Group F, followed by Germany, Sweden and South Korea.
But it seems that recent good results are not only due to Mexico’s outstanding performances.
We thought it was a myth, like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster or common-sense politics. Romelu Lukaku proved us wrong.
This past week the World Cup was infested with simulation and deceit, including from two of the world’s best players. Cristiano Ronaldo argued for VAR after flopping in the box; Neymar dove only for VAR to overturn the duped referee’s decision.
Today's games were expected to be one-sided affairs, but that wasn't the case. Heavyweights Portugal, Uruguay and Spain all struggled to hold on to 1-0 leads to get the vital three points. Not the most exciting day of the World Cup so far, but Twitter was still making the day and games enjoyable with some witty banter.
Disgraced former FIFA President Sepp Blatter will attend two matches at the 2018 World Cup at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin despite, the former’s six-year ban from football on unethical conduct charges.
Blatter will attend Wednesday’s match between Portugal and Morocco at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow before traveling to St. Petersburg to watch Brazil take on Costa Rica Friday.
France kicked off its World Cup campaign with a very unconvincing 2-1 win over Australia. Les Bleus manager Didier Deschamps decided that his entire 23-man squad needed to remain match fit, so he organised a friendly for the players who got a few minutes in the match against the Socceroos as well as players who did not get to play at all. The results were nearly disastrous.