Find a Football Team

If this is boring football then give Louis van Gaal more. The Netherlands’ head coach has bristled at claims he has created a tedious team but they had far too much class and intelligence for the USA as they comfortably advanced into the quarter-finals in Qatar.

The Internazionale defender Denzel Dumfries was the architect of the US’ demise with two assists and a fine third goal that extinguished any chance of a comeback by Gregg Berhalter’s side. The Netherlands now have five days’ rest before facing the winner of Argentina v Australia on Friday, while the co-hosts of the 2026 World Cup have four years to digest the painful lesson they were handed at the Khalifa International Stadium.

Brazilian football legend is reportedly no longer responding to chemotherapy treatment

The Brazilian football great Pelé is receiving palliative care after he stopped responding to chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo has reported.

Pelé, 82, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday to re-evaluate his cancer treatment, according to medical reports.

• Updates from the 7pm GMT kick-off at Ahmad bin Ali Stadium
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Four channels we used to have

Lionel Messi plays the 1,000th game of his career tonight. He has scored 788 goals in that time, but none have been at the business end of a World Cup. It’s one of modern football’s odder stats that the Goat brothers, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, have never scored in a World Cup knockout game. This will be Messi’s ninth attempt.

It took a stunning strike from Dutch record goalscorer Vivianne Miedema to give the Gunners a narrow win at home to Everton, but the scoreline made the league meeting look far less comfortable than it ultimately was.

“I felt OK until the last five minutes,” said Arsenal’s manager, Jonas Eidevall. “I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t put the game to rest because we had chances to do it.”

• Hat associated with war atrocities seen at Switzerland match
• Fan says he was set upon by Serbia supporters at World Cup

Serbia supporters displayed fascist slogans and aimed racist chants towards ethnic Albanians during their side’s match against Switzerland on Friday night, according to an eyewitness account given to the Observer.

The scenes at Stadium 974 in Doha, where Switzerland won 3-2 to secure a last-16 place in a match that spilled over during the second half, raise questions about Fifa’s stewarding and in particular its apparent tolerance of offensive insignia. Hasan Rrahmani arrived at the match wearing an Albanian flag around his neck but says he had it confiscated at the entrance while derogatory nationalist symbols were allowed through. He says he was shown a WhatsApp message that Fifa had sent to security staff containing pictures of items, pictures and phrases that were not allowed.

• Both players picked up injuries against Cameroon
• Brazil face South Korea in the last 16 on Monday

Brazil’s Arsenal forward Gabriel Jesus and the defender Alex Telles have both been ruled out of the rest of the World Cup after picking up injuries in their final Group G game against Cameroon.

Telles was substituted in the 54th minute of Brazil’s 1-0 defeat by the African side, with Jesus leaving the pitch 10 minutes later. Brazil face South Korea in the last 16 on Monday.

Every inhabited continent is represented at the last 16 in Qatar, aided by a crop of tactically smart, quick-thinking coaches

Amid the stultifying debate over whether the ball had crossed the byline before Ao Tanaka’s winner for Japan against Spain, something more important was lost. The goal ultimately ensured that, for the first time, every inhabited continent was represented in a World Cup last 16. Less than a day would pass before South Korea enhanced Asia’s contingent, guaranteeing the most diverse knockout stage in the tournament’s history.

It makes for a mouthwatering set of ties and will also be music to the ears of Qatar, which assiduously posits itself as a unifying force regardless of evidence to the contrary. Hosting a competition with a greater global spread of participants than any other is not hard to spin positively: the mix is a consequence of drama that, after a slow start, gave this group stage a claim to be the best ever on pure footballing terms.

Football Dreams was ostensibly about players in developing countries but its story makes for remarkable reading now

Look who we are, we are the dreamers. We make it happen. There is something seductively inane about the soundtrack to Qatar 2022, present in the slogans plastered across its surfaces, the sonic assault of the World Cup PA, the playlist of official anthems, centralised messages, approved corporate machine-feelings.

“Believing is magic” read the words across the back of the T-shirts worn by a column of men filing through the service exit of the vast fibreglass tent that is Al Bayt Stadium in the wee hours of Friday morning. The power of dreams. The power of football. The power of Football Dreams. What could ever be wrong with that?

Major tournaments are short and freakish things happen – and England, unlike more illustrious opponents, are still here

Three games into their World Cup campaign, 11 games into 2022, 79 games into Gareth Southgate’s reign, the question remains unanswered: are England actually any good?

To which there are probably two answers. The first is simple: yes, reasonably. They finished top of their group. They were joint top-scorers alongside Spain. They kept two clean sheets. The second is a weary sigh as any discussion of England is immediately submerged by hackneyed debates about arrogance and expectation, set against a backdrop of implausible ideals of breezy attacking perfection. What even is good?

African nation has produced an array of talent in recent years but must overcome key absentees to succeed in last-16 game

There is a daily ritual on Senegal’s beaches that begins just as the sun starts to set at about 5pm. Roughly divided by age, hundreds of young men play football until it gets dark or the tides of the Atlantic Ocean wash away their pitches and the discarded tyres being used as impromptu goalposts.