Round of 16

Not every knockout tie wants to entertain you, and this one never pretended otherwise. Switzerland and Colombia spent two hours in Vancouver refusing to make the first mistake, and the game they produced will…

Some knockout games ask a champion whether it still wants to be one, and for seventy-eight minutes in Atlanta Argentina had no answer. Egypt led 2-0, Lionel Messi had missed a penalty, and the holders were a…

A home World Cup is supposed to build, week by week, towards a night the whole country remembers. For the United States it ended instead on a Monday in Seattle, 4-1 to Belgium, the gap between ambition and…

England went to the Estadio Azteca, a ground where Mexico had never lost a World Cup match, raced two goals clear inside a first half that Jude Bellingham bent to his will, and then spent an hour finding out…

A straight red card carries an automatic one-match ban, and the player's team cannot appeal it. That has been one of the plainest lines in football's rulebook for decades. This week FIFA rubbed it out for…

For eighty minutes at MetLife this was heading exactly where the seedings said it should, and then Erling Haaland decided it would not. Two goals in the final eleven minutes carried Norway past Brazil and into…

France came to Philadelphia as the tournament's outstanding team and left it having won the sort of match that outstanding teams do not always enjoy. Paraguay, who had knocked out Germany a round earlier,…

A goalless first half can flatter the side hanging on, and for forty-five minutes Canada looked as though they might make their home World Cup last a little longer. Then Morocco remembered they were the better…