That’s a wrap! We will be here tomorrow for England vs. Croatia.
Man of the Match goes to Samuel Umtiti.
Also a case for Adil Rami’s mustache. A thing to behold.
Agreed on Hazard. He was a joy to watch today.
I feel like you have to credit France’s defense here, especially in midfield. Pogba probably did the most noteworthy defending, but Kante would be fine too. He had a great game constantly forcing Belgium to move the ball out wide where they didn’t want to play.
At least Kevin De Bruyne, can go back to his other job as the bully from “A Christmas Story.”
Honestly there’s a case for Hazard. He was incredible.
I don’t like seeing Lukaku sad.
Belgium tried its hardest to open up the game, but in a true unstoppable force/immoveable object matchup, France kept it tight, defended extremely well and picked off a few good attacks to win deservedly.
I’d say Pogba, but you can’t go wrong with Lloris.
Lloris or Pogba for me.
Lloris, Man Of The Match?
GAME! France wins 1-0 and moves onto the World Cup final!
We’ve finally in the last five minutes gotten to see how brilliant Paul Pogba is on the ball around the penalty area.
Tolisso with a quality chance to put France up 2 and sealing the game. Courtois palms it wide. Man, the goalkeeping so far…
I think England’s set piece strategy is a good possible hack for France’s defense that is so difficult to break down in open play. England is better by a little bit and may have a better approach to beat France.
Croatia. Very tired legs. And very tired old legs in the case of their best player (Modric).
England is better than Croatia, so I think you’d rather trust your defense to hold Croatia’s midfielders than trust your attack to break down England.
One more minute left.
I’m still rooting for extra time.
This game is getting pleasantly hectic in the dying minutes.
OK, if you’re France, would you rather see Croatia or England?
Holy cow that ball from Pogba.
Mbappe being a teen there. And I love it.
As we wrote last week, France was the best at wasting time while sitting on the lead.
Mbappe “clumsily” knocking the ball away from De Bruyne before the throw-in there was elite stuff.
Mbappe really showing some high quality time-wasting right now.
One of the problems with Martinez’s lineups is that when you stuff as many attackers as you can into your starting 11, there isn’t much room for more attackers when you need to push for goals.
Six minutes seems like a lot of minutes.
It would take another one of those stoppage-time miracles to keep Belgium’s run going. Right now, our model gives France a 96 percent chance of winning:
Argentina would have had five strikers on the field at the 60th minute.
Into stoppage time we go. Six more minutes!!
MICHY!!!
Batshuayi about to come on for Belgium. Martinez really throwing all his attackers now, but why so late?
Michy time.
LOL — yup, that’s one of the two “unsuccessful dribbles.”
Does it count as a completed dribble when you are brought down by uncalled foul outside the box?
Eden Hazard has completed 9 of 11 attempted dribbles today. He’s been Plan A for Belgium all day to beat this deep French defense, and nearly every good attack has used his dribbling to move it forward.
What a cross from De Bruyne. Unfortunately, nothing to show for it for Belgium.
Martinez has really gotten Hazard free today — it’s the one part of his tactics that worked.
Eden Hazard draws a free kick for Belgium in a great position.
Subbing on Nzonzi for Giroud means that Pogba is now playing higher up behind the strikers. We could actually see Pogba attacking in open play today.
There’s still a chance I could have a productive work day if the game ends in regulation, so definitely rooting for extra time.
Were the French fans booing Matuidi for asking to be subbed off? Tolisso is his replacement.
Thankfully Matuidi was demanding a sub — he never should have been put back on.
That said, the sport is better than it was four to five years ago when players would routinely get knocked out and come back in the game.
FIFA’s concussion protocol is terrible … or at least it’s terrible in execution and seems to exist so that they can say they have a protocol.
What’s the feel about FIFA’s concussion protocol? For those of us who don’t watch a ton of soccer, is it as much of a discussion piece as the NFL’s?
There’s five minutes left. I kinda want this game to go into extra time. Does anybody have access to that Buffalo Wild Wings button?
Nate, if England-France does happen, it would be the 31st all-time matchup between the two countries, including two World Cup matches. Or maybe it’s the 54th time they’ve faced, if we count military history.