“One of the charming aspects of following foreign football is realising that certain concepts are expressed in different ways to how it’s done in your own country. And one of these, for those of us accustomed to British conventions but who follow the game in continental Europe, is the simple passage of time. So whereas you’re generally more likely to find the 24-hour clock on the continent — a kick-off time might be listed at “19h” — it is somehow also more common for their television scoreboards to display a clock counting up from 00:00 at the start of the second half, rather than the 45:00 we’d be accustomed to in Britain. Similarly, if you read — for example — La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy, you won’t read goals recorded as being scored in the 65th minute in its pages, but instead in the 20th minute of the second half. …”
NY Times/The Athletic – Michael Cox
‘Action’ from an 1878 game between England and Scotland
No man born in 1976 played for England – and what else birth years tell us about football
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“France struck early through Michael Olise and sealed the points with a late Kylian Mbappé breakaway to open their World Cup qualifying campaign with a 2-0 victory over Ukraine in Wroclaw, Poland. Mbappé’s 82nd-minute strike, set up by his Real Madrid teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni at the end of a rapid counterattack, took the forward to 51 international goals, drawing him level with Thierry Henry in second place on France’s all-time scoring list behind Olivier Giroud, who has scored 57. … Italy opened Gennaro Gattuso’s reign as coach with a 5-0 home win over Estonia in World Cup qualifying, wasting chances for almost an hour before exploding in the final stages of the second half to turn dominance into a rout. …”
Scissors Kick 