⚽ Kick-off time: 12pm local/1pm EDT/6pm BST/3am AET ⚽ Bracketology | Player guide | Golden Boot | Email Tim
The last (and first) World Cup match I covered took four hours. That was France v Iraq, the game that, thanks to lightning in Philadelphia, had a two-hour half-time. But lightning doesn’t strike twice and the BBC forecast assures us that Houston will be “sunny with a gentle breeze”. Quite toasty too: 33 or 34 degrees – but the stadium has air-con.
This place hosted five group games, divided into two distinct types. Three were thrashings: Germany 7-1 Curacao, Netherlands 5-1 Sweden, Portugal 5-0 Uzbekistan. But the other two were cagey affairs: Portugal 1-1 DR Congo, Cape Verde 0-0 Saudi Arabia. Can we agree that today’s game could go either way?
It feels as if everyone in football knows Carlo Ancelotti, but Rodrygo, of Real Madrid and Brazil, knows him better than most. Ancelotti, he believes, is “driven by a phenomenal coherence”. Not something that can be said of every manager.
Hello everyone and welcome to the 74th game of this World Cup. We’re in the home straight now: only another 20 days to go! But the round of 32 has done some good matchmaking and this pairing looks like a case in point.
It’s Brazil, the past masters of the World Cup, against Japan, whose first tournament was only in 1998. Brazil will expect to go through, obviously: they won easily the only other time they met Japan at the World Cup (4-1 in Germany, 20 years ago) and in 14 meetings in all, they have 11 wins and just one defeat. But that defeat came on the last occasion, eight months ago, when Japan went 2-0 down in a friendly on home soil and somehow ended up winning 3-2. So, Casemiro, Vini – you have been warned.
Japan showed much of the same resilience the other day, when they twice went behind to the Netherlands and twice came up with an equaliser. They are unbeaten in this tournament - but then so are Brazil. This may take more than 90 minutes. Kick-off is at 12 noon in Houston, 1pm EST, 6pm BST.
