Well, well. England are through. France top the group with that romp against Mexico while Sampson’s side must travel to Ottawa to play Norway. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t think they deserved that win though it was not a blemish-free performance. Thanks a bunch for all your tweets and emails. Speak soon. Bye!
Full-time: England 2-1 Colombia
That’s your lot!
A lovely, delicate chip finds the English defence square and snoozing. Andrade notices this and latches onto the pass before looping it over Bardsley in a supreme example of finishing.
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GOAL!!! England 2-1 Colombia (Andrade, 90 + 4 mins)
This is nice.
90 + 3 mins It’s all over ... Mexico 0-5 France.
90 + 2 mins So it looks like Norway will be England’s next opponent. That will not be as much fun as a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel with enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.
90 mins There will be four more minutes till the final blow of the whistle.
88 mins Sepulveda will miss the round of 16 game after that yellow card. On her display tonight, Colombia might be better off without her.
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86 mins Well, well. This is interesting. On the edge of the England box, Colombia go down looking for a free-kick. It never was and the referee waves play on. England do just that and a long ball over the top sets Taylor free. She shares the half with Sepulveda and two retreating Colombian defenders. Well outside the box, Taylor gets to the ball before the keeper and looks to take it around her only for Sepulveda to take her down. It should be a red – especially since it did not look like the defenders would get back in time – but she only gets a yellow.
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84 mins Some thoughts from the Twitter world:
@ianmccourt Ever since Carney came off, the game is more balanced! England lost an edge when she was subbed off!
— Remi V. (@Remi_19) June 17, 2015
83 mins Ospina goes, Santos arrives.
82 mins France have made it five nil via Henry and it is an absolute belter!
81 mins Off goes Duggan, on comes Taylor.
80 mins England try to keep ball for a few moments and take the sting out of the South Americans. They fail and Colombia attack down the right. C Arias has the ball near the corner flag and she is monitored by Moore. Moore puts a light hand on her and the Colombian hits the ground like a giant bag of cement landed on her head. The referee tells her to catch herself on.
78 mins Rincon, in case you are wondering, jogged off without a limp or looking like she was injured. Baffling stuff from Taborda.
76 mins Eh, despite Rincon being Colombia’s best player in this half, Colombia have decided that the best thing to do in order to get something from this game is to replace her with Ariza. If anyone can explain that one to me, that would be great, thanks.
74 mins Another chance for England to make it three. Sanderson gets the ball in the box and has enough time and space but totally scuffs her effort.
72 mins Bardsley is having a terrific game and just now, she repelled yet another Colombian attack. Wide on the right, Ospina danced and powered her way past Moore with far too much ease and put a serious ball across the box. It could have been very dangerous but Bardsley cut it out with a superb punch.
70 mins Another free in almost the exact same spot. All 11 England players are behind the ball as England play the shy tortoise and retreat into their shell. The ball is sent in but Bardsley sails across the sky and collets the cross with ease.
68 mins Colombia get another free. This time it is wide on the right. It is launched deep as the Arias sisters combine. Bardsley deals with the attack as easily as a man swatting away a fly.
66 mins Scott puts her arms around Vidal’s waist and drags her to the ground. The result is a free-kick to Colombia and England’s first yellow of the game. While we wait for that free to be taken Kirby is replaced by Potter. How odd. Potter trots on and Colombia waste the free-kick.
64 mins Stoney is down and holding her left leg. Sampson looks worried. He should be. Stoney is so important to his side and she looks in real pain. Hold on. Panic over. It looks to be just cramp, though Potter is warming up.
62 mins Still Mexico 0-4 France which means England need a two-goal swing to win the group. Meanwhile, Rincon, who is really coming into the game now, has just fired one in from distance that went over the England bar by this much. Maybe even less. Rincon has form with these long-rangers. England will have to keep an eye on her.
60 mins Ospina and Rincon combine down the right to win a corner for Colombia. It’s their first of the game. It is sent to the back post by Rincon but headers are missed and after a bit of ding-dong, the England defence manage to show the ball the exit. Just about though. Colombia coming in to this a bit more now.
58 mins The game has gone a bit scrappy. Lots of high balls and loose passing. Colombia decide it is time to replace Usme with Vidal. Usme looks about as happy as a kid who wakes up on Christmas to find that Santa has forgotten their Transformer. Silly Santa.
56 mins Carney goes, Sanderson comes.
54 mins Now it is Duggan’s time to attack. Her shot on the edge of the area is blocked. Moments later Kirby tries to play one through for Carney but the young striker delays her pass and Colombia snuff out the attack. Carney lets her team-mate know exactly what she thinks about that delay.
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52 mins And that was nearly three to England. Moore attacked through the middle of the park. Looking up, she spotted the run of Scott off to the right and threaded a lovely pass into her path. Through on goal, however, she lost her nerve and fired off target.
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50 mins Bardsley delays over a goalkick. The Colombian fans tell her what they think about that. She won’t be flavour of the month in Bogotá tomorrow after that challenge on Clavijo, even though the keeper did nowt wrong.
48 mins Throw to England near the corner flag on the left. They pass it around before being pushed back and winning another throw. England push on once more, towards the Colombia goal but the danger is dealt with easily enough.
46 mins No half-time subs to tell you about by the way. Meanwhile, Williams curls a lovely long ball over the top, down the right, finding the run of Carney. Carney controls and in turn looks to play in Scott. Colombia neutralise any danger. Neutralise. What a sinister sounding word.
45 mins Here we go again.
The other game in the group is currently France 4-0 Mexico, so #Lionesses sit in second spot with 6pts GD+2. France top 6pts GD+3. #FIFAWWC
— England (@england) June 17, 2015
Half-time: England 2-0 Colombia
That’s your lot for now. Nothing more to tell you about here except for an exceptional save by Bardsley. Colombia, for once, had managed to string together a decent attack. Some intricate passing ended with a delicate chipped ball over the top and into the box but Bardsley rushed out and smacked away any danger .. with her face! Ouch. More ouch for Arias though. While doing so, she took the Colombian right out of it. Arias stays down for a while but eventually gets back up, moments before the half-time whistle goes. That looked like it really, really hurt.
A really enjoyable half of football, that.
— Georgina Turner (@georgina_turner) June 17, 2015
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45 mins In case you are wondering. As it stands, France have a goal difference of +3 while England are +2. Both have six points. That would see England go to Ottawa and play Norway. There will be three more minutes before the half-time bell rings.
42 mins Colombia fans have gone rather quiet.
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40 mins Some housekeeping. It was Carolina Arias who gave away the penalty and she got a yellow for her troubles. Also with a yellow beside her name is Usme, for that earlier challenge on Moore. One more thing. It is now Mexico 0-4 France.
GOAL!!! England 2-0 Colombia (Williams, 38 mins)
... and does not miss firing it to the left of the goal, though Sepulveda was not far away from getting a finger to it.
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PENALTY TO ENGLAND!
... that free-kick is fired in low and the ball dings and dongs its way around the box before Arias, sliding in, decides to stick out her arm and stop the flow of the ball. Hard to argue against that one. Williams steps up ...
34 mins Still 3-0 to France by the way. Meanwhile, England have another free-kick wide on the left. Williams floats it to the back post but Colombia clear momentarily. England come right back at them via Moore, that is until Usme hacks her to the ground and gives away a free-kick. Houghton will take ...
32 mins Sampson wants more protection for his players. He tells the referee. The referee tells him to book in for an extended say at Hotel du One.
29 mins Rincon shoves Greenwood to the floor. Just shoves. Not attempt to hide it. Williams takes the resulting free-kick that is located wide on the left. She aims it for the near post but this time Sepulveda can deal with it. She can’t, however, deal with a tiny shove – nothing like the one from Rincon – from Carney who is following through. The Colombian keeper hits the floor but everyone just smiles at her and soon enough she is back up and A-OK.
27 mins Carney does some nice work on the right, rolling her marker and making her way into space near the end line. She chips a delicate cross to the back post and all five feet and two inches of Kirby rises to head it. She gets her head to it all right but she can’t control it and her effort trickles harmlessly wide.
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25 mins Re that penalty claim:
@ianmccourt definite handball but very harsh. short distance from cross to arm
— Matt Merchant (@Matt_Merchant_) June 17, 2015
24 mins Velasquez takes down Scott wide on the right, near the corner flag with a nasty enough challenge. Greenwood takes. Greenwood fails to make it past the two-woman wall. Ho hum.
22 mins “Hi Ian” cheers Brian Cruickshank. “One summer I held the record as the person who had drank the most sour toe cocktails [See here for further details – Ian]. Maybe 1978? I was a tour guide at the time , and Dick Stevenson ( the founder of the toe and originator of the subsequent nasty practice ), was running boat tours on the river as far as Paradise Island where he had a salmon wheel scooping fresh salmon out of the river and barbecuing them on the spot for lunch. After a day of delighting the tourists , we’d get together and initiate a few souls to the club .It was always a laugh , and a great time to be in Dawson.”
20 mins Back to the England game. While I was typing away about the goal, England were up in the referee’s grill looking for a penalty. Have yet to see a replay so cannot say if they had a point or not. If anyone did, do holler.
18 mins Speaking of goals. France are now 3-0 up. Three! “This France-Mexico game is insane” says J.R. in Illinois. “I really think France could score 20 if they wanted to.”
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England had a free-kick a fair whack out. Houghton fired it in and even though it was low and coming at speed Sepulveda should have been able to keep a hold of it or, at the very least, push it away from the on-rushing England attackers. She didn’t. Instead she parried it to the right and and Carney followed it up and fired it home from close range and through Sepulveda’s legs. Easy peasy.
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GOAL!!! England 1-0 Colombia (Carney, 15 mins)
Oh Sepulveda!
12 mins Sepulveda is back on her feet and England have a corner on the right. Greenwood plays it short and the ball is swung to the back post and finds the late, training-ground run of Scott. Her header comes back across the box and Stoney rises but Stoney heads over.
10 mins Saying that, Scott speeds her way down the right and whips in a cross. It is aimed for Duggan but Ospina – I think, I’ve yet to see a replay – gets there before her. Duggan may not have got the ball but she got Sepulveda – accidentally – and the keeper is down.
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8 mins England look nervous. They are not passing well nor are they holding onto possession well.
7 mins Down on the byline on the left, Andrade shows some quick feet that leaves Nobbs looking like her feet are stuck in the mud. The angle is too tight for Andrade to shoot so she cuts it back to Montoya. The Colombian is in a good position but she shoots over under relatively little pressure.
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5 mins Well that didn’t take long? Delie has bundled France into the lead.
4 mins After some decent pressure from the South American side, England play some smart football down the left-hand side. Duggan tricks her way inside and tries to slip the ball into Kirby but Sepulveda comes and collects.
2 mins Felix Schäfer has the information to put Peter out of his misery. “The ranking of each team in each group will be determined as follows: a) greatest number of points obtained in all group matches; b) goal difference in all group matches; c) greatest number of goals scored in all group matches.” As for the match, England win an early free-kick wide on the left. It is fired to the edge of the penalty area and towards the head of Stoney but Colombia deal with it all easily enough.
1 min Peeeeeeeeep! Off we go then. England get us going. They are playing left to right for the first 45 minutes. Colombia do the opposite, as is the style of these times.
Out come the flags, out come the teams, out come the cheers from the crowd. (There are more Colombian fans then English ones.) Coming with all that is hollers of encouragement to team-mates. England are draped in white for the evening, Colombia are draped in navy. Before the action comes the anthems.
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We’ll do our best to keep an eye on that France game too. Anyone fancy hazarding a prediction for either?
“If France win today” says Peter Mumola, “by one more goal than England, leaving them both on 6 points with the same goal difference, what breaks them first – head to head or goals for or against?” Come on people. Put Peter out of his misery.
Louise Taylor has been in Canada these past few weeks sipping on maple syrup and avoiding sour toe cocktails – yes they really are a thing, just Google them there, they come from Dawson City in the Yukon* – as well as writing about why England face Colombia with an uncertain World Cup future ahead of them. Here is what she had to say:
Whatever happens beneath the closed roof of Montreal’s cavernous Olympic Stadium on Wednesday night no one can accuse Mark Sampson of being ill-prepared.
England’s coach knows that a win against Colombia in their final Group F game could potentially offer his side an easier passage through the knockout stages of Canada 2015.
A point could assure progression to the last 16 but the 32-year-old has still spent hours poring over shaky camera phone footage of Las Cafeteras provided by David Gough, the squad’s chief opposition analyst.
“Women’s football is still at the stage where it’s incredibly difficult to get hold of proper footage of teams like Colombia,” says Sampson. “Our head of analysis has gone out there six times to watch them live but all he had was a camera phone so it made it very difficult. I don’t think I’d know how to film a match on a phone but Dave’s done a great job trekking round the world and getting a few more stamps in his passport.”
Sampson and his coaches have been able to join the dots in Gough’s dossier after the luxury of viewing complete television recordings of Colombia’s 1-1 draw with Mexico and shock 2-0 win over the group favourites France. Along the way Felipe Taborda’s team scored their first ever World Cup goals and win.
“Watching the first two games, what we’ve been fed back from Goughy is becoming very clear,” says England’s coach. “We’re in a better place than if we’d had to play them first.”
Not that an England win is exactly simple. “This is a dangerous Colombian team,” says Sampson. “Emotionally they’re now in a fantastic place. They’ve beaten the favourites and they’ve got a huge confidence boost. You can feel their energy. They’ve got tremendous national pride and they’re well placed to qualify. They’re resolute, very strong physically and they’re going to be really tough opponents.
* Fun fact about Dawson. I once spent three days in the Bolivian desert with three girls from that town (Jena and Tasha and em, oh, I forget the other one’s name. Katy? Carly? Sorry!). We nearly got killed when the car we were driving went around a corner too fast, did not see the oncoming car and was forced to break just inches from a cliff edge and certain death. I was so scared I could not speak for days.
Dramatis personæ
England: Bardsley, Scott, Williams, Houghton (C), Nobbs, Carney*, Moore, Greenwood, Stoney, Duggan, Kirby. Subs: Chamberlain, Telford, Rafferty, Bassett, Scott, Aluko, Bronze, Chapman*, Potter, Taylor, Sanderson, White.
Colombia: Sepulveda*, Gaitan* (C), Ospina*, Montoya*, Velasquez*, Rincon, Usme, Clavijo, N. Arias, Andrade, C. Arias. Subs: Castaño, Perez, Arbelaez, Granados, Vidal, Pineda, Ariza, Cuesta, Santos, Cosme, Echeverri, Gonzalez.
Referee: Carol Anne Chenard (Canada)
*Denotes on a yellow card
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Good evening to you and you and you
Vital. Critical. Crucial. Important. Very important. Very, very important. Very, very, very important. Just important as your president. Serious. Significant. Decisive. Front page. Big league. Far reaching. Mattering much. Apply any of these and you get the relevance of this evening’s game for England against Colombia. It’s the World Cup for goodness sake, of course it’s all those, and much, much more. That realisation might have you resting uneasy in your chair. It might have you walking up and down and up and down and up and down, wearing out the faux-Persian Ikea rug that is so desperately hard to vacuum. It might even have you you fumbling for your pockets and yet another cigarette, while the other hand uses that snot-stained, old rag to wipe away the gathering sweat. But maybe you should take a leaf from Mark Sampson’s book. He’s as cool as the people who hand around Le Mary Celeste.
“It’s not a must-win game. We’re in a place where we can afford to drop some points and still go through, but of course we want to win the game.” He’s right. Kinda. It is not a must-win-or-the-world-will-end game but it is a win-this-last-group-match-and-life-is-a-heck-of-a-lot-easier game. Let’s explain why. Colombia, thanks to their draw with Mexico and their impressive win over France, are perched atop of the group with four points. England and France come next, both on three points, with only goal difference separating the two (in England’s favour). The aforementioned Mexicans are Johnny Last on one point. Come the final whistles tonight, the top two teams go through, no sweat. However, should you finish third, you need to be one of four best teams in that spot from the six World Cup groups to go through.
England probably don’t want to take that risk and probably don’t want to take the risk of coming second either as second means a tricky affair with the 1995 winners, Norway. (First will get you a game against the runners-up of a weak enough Group E.) Said affair would also mean England having to leave Montreal – the location of tonight’s game – and make the trip to Ottawa. It’s not a bazillion miles away, of course, but given how crucial rest is in a tournament like this, it’s a trip they could do without. (Incidentally, finishing third and progressing might mean a trip out west, which is a lovely part of the world, but probably one the English players would rather do on their summer holidays when they can enjoy the walk around Stanley Park to English Bay or escape to the pyramids at the Muttart Conservatory). So to ensure they ain’t tripping like that, England should approach this game with Colombia as a must-win one.
That task won’t be easy. As the Colombians showed against France, their current world ranking of 28 is deceptive, even if France should’ve had one penalty for the most blatant handballs you are likely to see this side Thierry Henry and another when Sandra Sepulveda handled outside the area. Colombia were lucky to get away with those but there was no luck involved with the discipline, solidity and focus they exhibited throughout that match. They are also a more than robust side, as England are only all too aware of. Sampson simply said his side were “ready” for that but Fran Kirby expanded up on it. “If Colombia try and kick me up,” she said, “that means I’m winning so I’ll give them a cheeky smile and carry on. That will probably annoy them even more but I think I’ll be alright.”
Speaking of Kirby, what an inspiration she is. Four years ago, seriously depressed following the death of her mother, she quit the game altogether. Two years later, she returns to Reading and scores 33 flipping goals in her first season back. One year later she scores on her England debut against Sweden. One year after that, she jacks in the amateur status, becomes professional, makes the World Cup squad (she is the second youngest member and the only player plying their trade in the second level of the Women’s Super League) and scores in her ever World Cup match. “It’s new and exciting for a little girl like me to be getting so much attention,” she said after the win over Mexico. “If I’m getting this kind of interest, it must mean that I’m making the people behind me happy, which is a feeling I love.” Skilled, articulate and hard-working. England could have a new national hero here.
Of course, there will a lot more happy people should England win today. Can they do it? Of course. Will they do it? Well stay tuned to find out. Team news and 90 minutes of World Cup action is almost upon us. Let’s go!
Kick-off: 9pm
