It was a match neither team could afford to lose in Group E and it appeared to be heading toward a draw in the closing minutes. Then Xherdan Shaqiri made one game-changing run and the next thing you know he’s peeling his shirt off with a 2-1 win for Switzerland vs Serbia.
It turns out, Nigeria is more than just a pretty uniform. They’ve got Ahmed Musa.
After looking inept in a loss to Croatia to open the World Cup, the Super Eagles were flying against Iceland. Ahmed Musa scored two goals in a 2-0 win on Friday, succeeding where Lionel Messi and Argentina failed, but at the same time giving hope to La Albiceleste that they can advance through the group stage.
As the Argentina vs Croatia highlights show, Lionel Messi and company collapsed against an altogether superior opponent on Thursday in Nizhny Novgorod, 3-0. Spearheaded by the influential play of the sublime Luka Modric, Croatia is through to the Round of 16 while Argentina is on the verge of a shock group stage elimination.
Sergio Romero is normally Argentina’s goalkeeper. The Manchester United backup picked up a knee injury before the World Cup, and, according to the FOX broadcast, he apparently felt like he would've been fit by the time the tournament rolled around.
Denmark escaped with a 1-1 draw against a resilient Australia earlier this morning, and the Danish can thank their lucky stars that Australia didn’t convert more of its chances.
The Danish Dynamite opened the game with a bang, as striker Nicolai Jørgensen and star midfielder Christian Eriksen combined in a beautiful pass-and-move play, and Eriksen rocketed a volley past Socceroos keeper Mat Ryan.
19-year-old PSG forward Kylian Mbappe, already the game’s second-most expensive player ever and the winner of the prestigious 2017 Golden Boy award, has become the youngest goalscorer for France at any major international tournament after opening the scoring for Les Bleus against Peru.
No event escalates individuals to the status of national hero or global villain as dramatically as the World Cup. The idolatry that follows success and the stigma that follows failure are woven into the fabric of history, and the repercussions will typically follow footballers for the rest of their lives. Daily, we’ll take a look at who played the role of hero and who played the role of villain at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Today we saw the return of Mo Salah, but Russia continued its excellent form and destroyed Egypt. Japan pulled off a huge upset and Senegal became the first African nation to get a win in this World Cup.
This game saw the first red card of the tournament and it came in the third minute for Colombia. The early red gave way for Japan to get an unlikely win.
Russia’s 3-1 win over Egypt at Saint Petersburg Stadium has almost guaranteed the hosts a place in the Round of 16 while Mohamed Salah and the Pharaohs have been all but eliminated from the World Cup. After failing to come off the bench in Egypt’s devastating 1-0 opening defeat to Uruguay, Salah was unable to make his presence felt Tuesday until earning and converting a conciliatory penalty in the 73rd minute.
I’m making this up — this could’ve happened at the 1934 tournament or something — but I’m pretty sure that Tuesday’s match between Colombia and Japan is the first-ever World Cup game in which a player has been sent off in the third minute, resulting in a successfully taken penalty, only to be followed by a 39th minute equalizer in which a player strokes a free kick under the wall.
I just have a good feeling that we’ve never seen anything like this before.