World Cup 2026

[sussexpob]

Well I got my sister in law, niece and brother in law turn up unexpectedly as a last minute detour from their alps holiday, so I'm outnumbered 6-1 here....

But it's win-win tonight anyway.

Biased to England slightly admittedly, but I think 3-1 win for the england boys tonight

[Gingerfinch]

Norway happy to sit in.

[Gingerfinch]

Looked like a lucky goal

[Gingerfinch]

Great goal, first touch was sublime

[bigfluffylemon]

Should have been a foul ahead of Norway's first goal.

Has to be Bellingham again with the equaliser. He's had a phenomenal tournament.

[Gingerfinch]

Not sure it was a free-kick?

[Gingerfinch]

Was a foul but we got lucky there. Pickford looking shaky!

[bigfluffylemon]

Norway goal disallowed, now players down.

It's all happening.

[Gingerfinch]

Hanging in there!

[bigfluffylemon]

England have been weirdly passive this half. Not really tried anything.

[Gingerfinch]

Bellingham again. Keeper error but who cares!

[bigfluffylemon]

Haaland off

[bigfluffylemon]

Another rollercoaster.

But somehow found a way.

[Durhamfootman]

Goodness, what a great result in the end

I thought England looked tired tonight, particularly in the second half. That energy sapping high altitude game v Mexico followed by Miami and the extreme heat really showed. On balance I think Norway can consider themselves very unlucky. They should have won it in that second half, but England were saved by VAR, the crossbar and a post (I think... so much happened it's hard to keep track).

It was a pretty good game plan from Norway... sit back for a bit and let England run themselves down, then counter quickly. The goal was a fluke.... Ronaldinho-esque, but they had other good opportunities that they squandered. They were all over England in the second half. England seemed to be playing on fumes, but just did enough to stay in the contest.

Somebody (might have been Chris Sutton) described England as a team of moments, in the build up to the game, and it proved pretty prophetic. The moments came from Bellingham. A glorious equaliser and then the winner in extra time when he was the first to react to the keeper's mistake, despite being dead on his feet. Magnificent!

Argentina next.... good luck

Actually it occurs to me that, in another dimension England might have ending up to play 5 consecutive matches against teams from S America. Panama in the last group game, then it was looking like Ecuador right up until the last minute for the R32, then Mexico, could easily have been Brazil in the QFs and finally Argentina. Bloody hell... that would have been a run

[Durhamfootman]

Tuchel was cross with the players in his full time interview. He wasn't happy with the level of performance.... and he has a point, because this was a poor game after the heroics of the Azteca, but he has to shoulder some of the responsibility for that. He made a few very odd decisions.

Rice was nowhere near ready to play after his illness, but he still picked him, so England were playing with 10 and a half men in that first half, before he replaced him

Gordon was still creating havoc when he took him off and the Norway defence had a much easier ride in his absence

He took O'Reilly off to introduce Spence, when Konsa was pretty much out on his feet and could hardly run

Maybe I'm being overly critical... there were a lot of players who looked exhausted from both sides and maybe what he did was simply firefighting to compensate for fatigue. Eyebrows were raised when Haaland came off, but he'd been limping for several minutes prior to that. The heat was definitely taking its toll all over the pitch