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Is it too early to start plotting England’s inevitable route to World Cup glory? If nothing else it’ll stop me refreshing the internet to find out if Tim Sherwood is going to manage Spurs for the next three games before Dave from Chas & Dave comes in for the final Hail Mary.
Perhaps you’re focused on Arsenal coming second in everything, Everton finishing above Liverpool or the wild York/Rochdale title race in the National League. Take a weekend off and start dreaming of Gianni and Trump handing Harry Kane the trophy as the world burns.
Friday’s game with Uruguay may not get your pulse racing, but this is the true start of Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup countdown. Sixty years of hurt scans well in the song, at least. Once every 60 years feels OK. More common than Halley’s Comet, but sparse enough to feel life-changingly special. Twice in your lifetime, if you’re lucky.
Casemiro has dismissed the idea of reversing his decision to leave Manchester United this summer. The midfielder has been rejuvenated under Michael Carrick, scoring two goals in three Premier League matches.
United announced in January that Casemiro would leave the club when his contract expires after four seasons at Old Trafford and more than 150 appearances. Speaking after playing in Brazil’s 2-1 defeat by France the 34-year-old said: “I am still enjoying it a lot (in Manchester). It is huge, the affection that the fans have shown towards me. But I do really believe the decision is made and done. I believe it will be some difficult moments, these (final) games at Manchester United.”
Casemiro, who previously spent a decade at Real Madrid, had warm praise for Carrick and the impact the former midfielder has had since taking over from Ruben Amorim on an interim basis.
“Above all, Michael is a specialist in my position on the field, he was a truly great player,” said the Brazilian. “That makes everything much easier and he is always talking to us. I feel like we are in a good dynamic right now in Manchester and my objective now is to get the club back into the Champions League.”
United have won seven of their last 10 games to climb to third place in the Premier League table and will face Leeds in their next match on April 13. PA Media
Australia have defeated Cameroon 1-0 in Sydney in a friendly. Join Martin Pegan for reaction:
“Harry is Harry,” Thomas Tuchel said yesterday of his first-choice forward for England. Impossible to argue with that.
“He is a starter for us. The question is, if we are chasing a result, do we take Harry off? Someone who is also a good penalty-taker?”
And of the forwards who will start tonight against Uruguay, in the absence of Kane, Tuchel added: “It’s a chance to compete for a real chance to start.”
I like the fact that Tuchel is voicing the possibility that Kane may be taken off in a big knockout game if necessary. To mention that you need penalty-taking ability in the player coming on is a clear indication that he is learning from the mistakes of past managers, when it comes to persisting with an exhausted Kane because he was needed for a possible shootout.
Roy Hodgson back in management at 78. Who would have thunk it?
While we digest and reflect on that news, why not have a bash at this week’s sports quiz?
You can also mail me thoughts on Roy’s return, World Cup playoff woe/joy, or anything else football-related.
Bristol City appoint Roy Hodgson as manager
Ben Fisher
Roy Hodgson has made a sensational return to management at the age of 78 with Bristol City after Gerhard Struber was sacked by the Championship club.
Hodgson, who has been out of work since leaving Crystal Palace in February 2024, will take charge of City for the remaining seven games of the season. They are currently 16th in the Championship.
David Hytner
In the analysis of Thomas Tuchel’s split-squad approach for this international window, his naming of 35 players for the Wembley friendlies against Uruguay on Friday and Japan on Tuesday – including nine that he has not previously worked with – one detail has slipped under the radar.
It is because it is easy to forget that the England manager recently signed up to stay on for Euro 2028. There is a degree of longer-term planning about him wanting to get a first look, for example, at Ben White and Lewis Hall, Kobbie Mainoo and James Garner. Fikayo Tomori as well. The centre-half left Chelsea for Milan, initially on loan, in January 2021 – four days before Tuchel arrived at the London club for his brief but storied spell.
If you missed it somehow, here’s a roundup of last night’s other World Cup playoff action in Europe, including a 2-1 comeback win for Poland against Albania, Piotr Zielinski and Robert Lewandowski with the goals.
“It would be very, very Italian to scrape through these playoffs looking like utter garbage only to have a major impact this summer,” comments thebigfeller on the Italy v Northern Ireland match report.
“If they get past Bosnia, Group B looks extremely inviting: it’s no punishment at all for where the Azzurri find themselves. How far could they go if they do qualify? Quarter-finals I reckon. The road back to respectability is beckoning.”
“I thought Northern Ireland, who really have no quality playing resources at all, made a tremendous fist of it. They were far more competitive than I’d imagined and remain a really remarkable footballing nation with, lest we forget, fewer than two million people. That’s the smallest population, by far, of any World Cup quarter-finalist in history (1958, when they knocked Italy out in qualifying, then eliminated Argentina and Czechoslovakia at the finals); and of course, they reached the second phase in 1982 as well.
“They’re always all but impossibly up against it. Yet they fight their corner very manfully. Hard lines to them.”
Wales fans! Northern Ireland fans! Please email me.
Jonathan Wilson
The pattern is not unfamiliar. Marcelo Bielsa arrives. The force of his personality, the radicalism of his ideas, his charismatic eccentricity, elevates everyone. Results are good, performances intoxicating. The football is not merely successful but comes to be regarded almost as a moral good: playing the right way for a coach who projects a profound sense of integrity.
Gradually the picture changes. Fatigue sets in. Players weary of their manager’s obsessive nature. Pundits and fans begin to wonder if everything has to be quite so relentless all the time. Bielsa’s quirks come to be regarded less with affection than with aggravation. Levels drop, Bielsa leaves.
As someone who has an actual ticket for England v Uruguay at Wembley tonight, I’m looking forward to seeing how Marcelo Bielsa has them playing.
If only Jonathan Wilson had written about it …
A comment from JulesVerne75 on the Czech Republic v Ireland match report:
“As a Czech fan of course I am very pleased about going through after being 0-2 down and Ireland being awarded the softest ever penalty. But to be brutally honest, tonight was a game between two teams that no neutrals would miss at the World Cup. Currently both Ireland and our team are pretty poor … So happy for our boys – the current crop are not blessed with much talent but they did their best, and after facing some very brutal criticism from Czech fans during this qualifying cycle, I am just pleased that they got to experience the joy of a hard fought victory. But Denmark will be a step too far.”
And a reply from FCNordsjaelland:
“Dane here, I am not as confident about a Denmark win on Tuesday as you are. Denmark are the “better” team if both teams play their best, but the Danish side have been inconsistent in qualifying.
“They’ve not been great at home in particular, so the game being in Prague actually makes me a little less nervous.”
Jack Snape
They are a World Cup fairytale, a footballing nation barely a decade old with fewer people than South Australia. A Balkan West Virginia, but with a fraction of the area, and a checkered past.
Minnows Kosovo are just one game away from their first appearance at a World Cup, and a place beckons in group D alongside Australia, Paraguay and co-hosts the United States.
All that stands in their way is a single, all-or-nothing playoff against Turkey at home in Pristina on Tuesday. It is a marvellous climax to a qualification campaign that has become a rallying cry for national optimism and pride.
The Brazil manager, Carlo Ancelotti, played down fans’ chants for Neymar, who was not selected for the squad, after their 2-1 defeat by France in a warm-up game in Boston on Thursday.
Neymar was left out after the 34-year-old missed a recent Santos match with muscle fatigue – a fixture Ancelotti had planned to watch as part of his assessment before naming the squad.
“Right now we have to talk about those who are here, who played, who gave everything, who showed character, who worked very hard. I am satisfied,” Ancelotti said.
“I think Raphinha played very well. He had some muscle discomfort at the end of the first half and we had to substitute him, but he had many opportunities and very good movement off the ball.
“And Vini (Vinícius Júnior) always tries; he always makes the difference. A striker cannot always score but the work done by both of them was good.”
Neymar, Brazil’s leading scorer with 79 goals, has not played for the national team since suffering a serious knee injury in October 2023 and has struggled to maintain a consistent run of matches since returning to Santos last year.
Ancelotti has repeatedly said the forward will be considered if he is fully fit. Despite the defeat and Neymar’s absence, the Italian said the performance reinforced his belief in the squad’s potential.
“I think today’s game makes it very clear to me that we can compete with the best teams in the world. I have no doubt about that,” Ancelotti said.
Brazil will next face Croatia on March 31 in Orlando ahead of the June 11 to July 19 World Cup in North America.
Jacob Steinberg
Thomas Tuchel has acknowledged that Ben White needs to clear the air with his teammates after returning to the England squad, but the head coach is confident the defender will not be booed by the Wembley crowd during tonight’s friendly against Uruguay.
White has not been part of the setup since exiting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar early for personal reasons and the decision to end his international exile has not gone down well with some people. The Arsenal player has never explained the reasons for his departure and subsequently making himself unavailable for selection for the rest of Gareth Southgate’s time in charge.
“Surprisingly it doesn’t hurt as much as thought it would,” writes Ross, a Republic of Ireland supporter, of the penalty shootout defeat in Prague.
“Ireland just didn’t deserve to go through, they were passive the whole second half, and let the extremely ordinary Czechs come on to them.”
Nick Ames
Graham Potter may be in it for the long haul but the immediate outlook looks pretty bright too. This was his third game in charge of Sweden and the biggest compliment to pay is that they looked like themselves. A strong, diligent defensive performance nullified a lightweight Ukraine and it helped that, at the other end, they could call upon a centre-forward head and shoulders above anyone else on view.
Sammie Szmodics, of the Republic of Ireland, was knocked out after coming on as a substitute against the Czech Republic in Prague. He has posted on a well-known social media microblogging website to say he is fine and also thanked medical staff.
“Gutted the way it ended,” wrote Szmodics. “Fans and boys immense all evening !! Appreciate everyone’s messages. And thank you to the medical staff who acted so quickly to help me. On the mend. We go again.”
We certainly do, Sammie, we certainly do.
Which countries have qualified for the World Cup – and how did they do it?
Andy Martin takes a look:
Australia and Cameroon have just kicked off in a friendly encounter in Sydney.
Martin Pegan has the latest here:
Ewan Murray
Game seven of Gennaro Gattuso’s Italy tenure eventually delivered comfort. In number eight, he will look to end the painful wait of a nation by returning his country to the World Cup for the first time since 2014. Northern Ireland’s future, a bright one with this young squad, means looking towards Euro 2028. This was a campaign too soon.
Andy Hunter
A familiar tale of World Cup playoff agony awaited the Republic of Ireland in Prague, but this was no hard luck story. Heimir Hallgrímsson’s team twice had the Czech Republic where they wanted them, in normal time and in a penalty shootout, and twice they let them off the hook. Dreams of a first World Cup in 24 years evaporated as a consequence.
Ben Fisher
Two years to the day since penalty shootout heartbreak against Poland, more agony from 12 yards for Wales, this time to deny them a shot at reaching this summer’s World Cup. Bosnia and Herzegovina prevailed 4-2 on spot-kicks after a typically absorbing night in the Welsh capital, one that went the distance, more than 133 minutes passed before Brennan Johnson spooned over and Neco Williams saw his penalty saved by Nikola Vasilj.
Preamble
The morning after. Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland all fell in the World Cup playoffs last night, so there will be plenty of analysis and reaction to get through.
England host Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay in a friendly at Wembley this evening, and there are plenty of other interesting friendlies, including the Netherlands v Norway and Spain v Serbia.
The Women’s Super League is also back after the midweek action in the Champions League, with three matches each on Saturday and Sunday.
Fixtures are here, results are here, and my email is here if you’re a Wales, Northern Ireland or Republic of Ireland fan and you feel the need to vent.
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