Balj

They have that smoothness as if they have an extra player - lovely football.

Started beautifully - just the finishing. Finishing sorted…!

Chapeau Japan 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Germany don’t seem to have goals in the team and defensively suspect - not a great combo.

Those Japanese celebrations - brilliant!

Our kits are always a couple of degrees off - Germany’s always seem able to generate an envious glance.

Can’t think of a bad German kit tbh.

I suspect this might be the precursor to exactly that - I think the average is about 35 mins ball in play for a half currently so might start 30/35 mins. Don't have too much of a problem with that except there is then no reason to rush back once the game has stopped. So can see games being even longer as a result - lot of faff in between stopping and starting in sports with stopwatch timing.

Very welcome from Fifa though I'm not aware of a federation that already does this - injury time seems to be about the same across most leagues. For people like me who have a tight train to catch after a game it's going to involve me running a bit more:)

low quality but high fluidity about this one - enjoyable enough to watch though.

I just looked it up and Croatia are a younger team than I thought - Modric the outlier. At 27 they should all be at their peak. As they over perform so much I initially thought they must be aging more than that.

Fair outcome - super save

Lewie was doing his share of pushing there

Feck me!

Yep - they don’t even need to be on the shoulder of the last man the line is so high. Poor forward play.

Excellent news. Need fewer wrestlers and more footballers in the box at corners.

It’s a penalty as Maguire should have been too - good to see holding being clamped down on. Cool pen too.

Sadly the word soccer was a construct of Oxford and Cambridge universities long before the yanks. Used interchangeably in England since the early 1900’s I think. They also came up with Rugger for Rugby - adding “er” was a fad at the time.

Agreed - looks a really good player.

Yep correct - as bizarre as it was it was actually impressive officiating. I wouldn’t have even thought to look - A1 technology issuing some kind of auto alert may be.

Does Jermaine Jenas have anything of value to say?

He’s a good looking fella for sure …

They have to follow a protocol so it’s a medical not a football decision - clearly they followed it and then ignored until he’s now made it himself. Utterly awful but short of having a boxing style independent assessment not a lot you can do. Wish they’d stop showing it though.

Refs been very whistle happy today - unusual as most continental European refs let the game flow even more than in the Prem.

I don't think we are out of trouble yet - any number of teams in or around us (as shown this weekend) can pick up results and go on runs too. We have good momentum at the moment but as mentioned above Youri and/or Madders going in Jan could stall that. As could another few injuries on top of Evans and Justin already. We would lose so much control and creativity in the middle of the park without Youri and Madders that we might find goals hard to come by. Would like to see us add a player or 2 in January for some depth - Wilf coming back is the not the same Wilf as he was a year or two back.