Ohhhh, this is what I follow sports for. The moments when great players do great things under incredible pressure.

Sometimes a team plays it the right way, takes all of their chances and gets the maximal result that they can obtain. This is what Portugal did tonight. All the headlines will go to Cristiano but the team got it right and I watched them somehow weather some fantastic play from Spain. A few of the breakaways from Portugal that didn't actually come to anything were sublime with Ronaldo himself playing some absolutely incredible one touch flicks or passes to set the correct person away to make a few 2 on 2 situations but Spain get back to cover so quickly.

I think that 9 times out of 10 Portugal lose the game I just watched. If they just drop their level by the slightest percentage, Ronaldo doesn't take every chance, De Gea doesn't suddenly develop butter fingers or Spain wrap up a couple more chances that they created. But this is why this sport is so good! Incredible game. Incredible game!

Who do you favour for the golden boot? Ronaldo got 3 but how far will Portugal really get? Costa got two and I still see Spain going all the way so he should have 6 more games to build on those 2.


Exciting last minute finales in the other two games today, great performance by Iran. They did what Saudi Arabia would have hoped for, putting on a resilient and slightly fortuitous display to get the result.

Good stuff so far!!!

Tonight France are going to smash Australia that's my prediction

Yes, it is truly wonderful to see matches like this!



I agree with you that Portugal would lose under slightly different circumstances. I'm not completely sure about "the team got it right", because they made pretty basic errors. Guedes should've scored that pass from Ronaldo, and Quaresma also had a pretty clear one. Regardless, it was an amazing game by both sides. I just think Portugal still has a lot of work to do. Nothing surprising about Pepe acting the way he did.



Ronaldo is certainly a candidate. Messi is as well, especially because he could get plenty against Iceland and probably one or two vs Croatia and/or Nigeria. Griezmann, James Rodriguez, and Costa also serious candidates. But I'll be able to give better predictions once the group stage is over, or at least the first set of matches.



I have a feeling we will be seeing many more of those last minute goals. 5 out of the 13 goals so far have happened after the 80th minute!

As sorry as I feel for my Australian friends, I predict the same thing.

Gerard Pique has announced his retirement from the national team after the World Cup.

Good morning/night to all! 4:56am in Mexico City. France vs Australia is about to begin.

Wasn't expecting a scoreless halftime between Australia & France

Surprising for sure. Looking forward to the second half.

France 0-0 Australia

History being made as VAR is used for the first time to call a penalty.

And now penalty kick for Australia!

France 1-1 Australia

Due to problems with my laptop charger, I won’t be able to do live coverage for the time being. I will still post a review later today. Pray for me!

Argentina—Iceland 0-0 in the 5th minute.

Iceland with two close shots—the second one narrowly missing.

All credit to the Socceroos for making life difficult, but was very disappointed with France, I expected much more from them.

Only managed to watch 2nd half, so don't know what full game was like, but what I saw was scrappy, two peculiar penalties and a winning goal....just (just bounced goal side of line).
First penalty..........ok there was contact, but in true spirit of the modern game, the French player "made a meal of it", to earn it in first place.
A very unwelcome aspect of modern game, is any foul remotely near the penalty area, sees the "victim" go down pole-axed and put on a performance worthy of at least an Oscar nomination.
Australia's penalty.........how peculiar...........again ok, slow motion shows it technically was correct, but took the referee long enough to change his mind after initially waving play on.
So in the end, the main difference between the teams was Paul Pogba!

19th minute Argentina scores.

23rd minute—Iceland ties it up!

A little interesting tidbit (at least to me)— one of the analysts just said Iceland’s coach is a dentist.

Oh dear, think I might have got my penalties mixed up above........:(

Hope Iceland do well.............my wife has got them in her work World Cup draw!

Messi’s PK stopped by the keeper!

Whst a result! The smallest nation ever in the World Cup with a draw against a world superpower.

Again a match where I only saw the second half............however...........brilliant "All hands to the pumps" stuff by Iceland, virtually one-way traffic the entire half.

Not, IMO, one of Lionel Messi's better games.........the missed penalty pretty much summed it up. Argentina, like France earlier, disappointing, the more the game wore on, the more they seemed to run out of ideas and quite a few shoulders seemed to go down.

However, take nothing from Iceland, they will be happy with this result, I suspect....a footballing version of the old Viking "Shield Wall".

Peru vs Denmark has started. Let’s see how well I can do this from my phone.

Peru misses a penalty! What a shame! VAR helped here too. Lots of penalties today.

Some bad luck for Peru; I thought they were the better team, but with all those missed shots they paid the price.

Yeah, they missed too shots. A shame. Nigeria-Croatia is underway.