For various reasons, I didn’t see much football yesterday. I was out at night, so I had to follow Argentina v Mexico through occasional flashes of my phone. From what I could see, a lot of people were suggesting that Argentina weren’t playing very well, but when you have Lionel Messi and he can produce the kind of goal that he did, you always have a chance. The second goal was also tasty.
Previously, France came out late to beat Denmark and qualify for the round of 16. Will they rotate a bit for their last game against Tunisia? Maybe we’ll see William Saliba make his World Cup debut. The other match in that group, between Australia and Denmark, turns out to be a win-win scenario for the Danes, but a draw would likely see the Socceroos through (on the grounds that Tunisia didn’t do something slightly shocking against France).
The Aussies beat Tunisia 1-0 in a game I watched nothing of, and I saw Wojciech Szczesny save a penalty for Poland as they beat Saudi Arabia 2-0. Once again though, I didn’t get to see any of that yesterday.
Today, Japan faces Costa Rica and it looks like Takehiro Tomiyasu will miss out due to injury. I’m a bit worried about this, as we saw him take a hit a couple of weeks before the tournament started. He played the second half of the 2-1 win over Germany, but went down late in stoppage time. It has been presented to us as a smart move to break the flow for Germany, and that may well have been part of it. However, Japan had also used all five substitutes at the time, so his presence on the pitch might have been necessary. A slight concern from Arsenal’s perspective, and one to keep in mind as the tournament progresses.
Also today, we have Belgium facing Morocco, then Croatia against Canada, before the game of the day which is Spain against Germany tonight. The Spanish were very impressive in their first game, Germany not so much in the second half against Japan, perhaps a bit arrogant in their approach. So the need to take something from a game against a team that scored 7 in their first game is really an interesting dynamic. They go all out on attack against this Spain team and they have the quality to cut it in two with just a couple of passes, so it will be fascinating to see how they tackle it. Let’s hope it’s a good game, and not some kind of severe stalemate that this type of scenario can produce.
Right. Let’s leave it there for now. James and I will be recording the 500th episode of Arsecast Extra later this morning. Keep an eye out for calls for questions on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra, or if you’re a member of Arseblog on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord. server.
We’ll have the pod for you by lunchtime. Until then.
