-TSS-

That heavy rain totally ruined the celebrations for the French. Many of them looked like "can we please just get into the locker-room?"

Even Finland is a bigger country than Croatia but Finland will never even qualify for the World Cup when as Croatia are in the final.

If Yugoslavia were still a single team they would be really good on paper but they would need Tito as their manager to stop the players from killing each other.

Never gonna happen!

I'm glad that North-America got the 2026 tournament but I still think the new tournament-format with expansion to 48 teams ruins the competition. Doubtlessly most of the crucial knock-out matches will be played in the USA and Mexico so therefore Canada can claim to host most of the earlier matches.

People have the idea that if you get rid of Putin and his regime then there would be some nice and democratic regime taking over. Unfortunately, if Putin goes he may be replaced by someone who would make us miss Putin.

Theresa May is definitely not Maggie; She is weak and predictable in the negotiations. No wonder Boris Johnson resigned.

James: I would like to ask you as you are American about the Vietnam-war how did the soldiers serving in the war end up there? Namely, Sweden whose socialist government critisized the USA for the Vietnam-war offered asylum to those American war-deserters to managed to get to Sweden. It was only Clinton who pardoned the war-deserters. Prior to that, had they travelled to the USA they would have been arested. Wasn't there some sort of a lottery-system or something like that to decide who went to Vietnam? Powerful families bought themselves out of the war as the stories about GWB or Clinton how they dodged the draft.

Oh dear! I can only imagine how much property will be smashed up all across England by disappointed fans.

If England wins the tournament we'll hear about it for next 52 years. However, seems that there is no fear of that happening as the French seem to be above everyone else. Rather France than Brazil for me anyday. When Brazil gets knocked out any tournament is saved.

Europe will take a 12-9 lead over titles after this WC. Unlikely that Europe will ever be caught again. Brazil still remains the most successful single country and may continue to be in the future as well.

When are they going to replay the Colombia-game? You know, Colombians have signed a petition to FIFA that the game must be replayed because they lost and that is not acceptable.

All-European semi-finals now once again. It means that most probably Europe will never be overtaken in terms of titles as it was prior to this year 11-9 but will now change to 12-9.

No doubt tomorrow everyone in Finland will be cheering for England, not because of England, but because they are against Sweden. Every time when Sweden gets knocked out of the world cup there is joy in Finland and then the Swedes ask how did the Finss do at the world cup. That's a good question. Sweden has qualified many times and done also well. Finland has never qualified and never will either. Even Canada has qualified once and they will certainly qualify again in eight years time as co-hosts.

Yes, Putin's team must go out against Croatia. And hopefully the Swedes go out too against the Swiss. There is nothing more irritating than the Swedes gloating their sporting success, be it hockey or soccer.

A big team will win it at the end and the only big teams left are Brazil and France. However, they are up against each other already in the semis and the winner will meet Croatia/Sweden/Colombia or perhaps even Russia.

Spaniards just don't have the feeling of champions about them like they did all the way in 2008-12. However, who would have bet any money on Italy winning the world cup after the group stages in 1982?

Even canada has appeared once in the world cup final tournament. That was 32 years ago in 1986. They did not proceed from their group. Must have passed largely unnoticed in Canada at the time as even if soccer is gaining popularity these days even in North-America that was certainly not the case in the 80's.

Maradona has become old... and fat. He also behaves like a donkey with giving the middle-finger to the fans of the other team.

The VAR-system is supposed to eradicate obvious errors but it has become something of farce as it has gone to that thatevery unclear situation is later reviewed, which disrupts the game totally. However, if that is what it takes to prevent any more "hand of God"-goals then so be it.

It's an eternal worry for FIFA that Americans don't like soccer. That was certainly a factor which prompted the organisation to award the 2026 competition to three North-American countries to be co-hosted. What baffles me is why did they even include Canada. I can understand Mexico because Mexicans just love the game but Canada?

My apologies to you Canadians as our Finnish Foreign Minister attended some anti-abortion vigil in Canada claiming that he was doing it in his spare time. When you are a minister you are a minister 24/7, there is no spare time. Attending demonstrations in another country is off-limits for a minister. Demonstrations seek to change the laws of a country and when a minister attends one in another country he is intervening in affairs of another country. The dimwit we have for a foreign minister is a catholic. Being catholic is very rare in Finland but unfortunately the exception has reached to become foreign minister.

It is only exit-polls thus far but it seems that in the Irish abortion-vote the yes-side for the relaxing of the law is going to win comfortably. Apparently the new generation of Irish don't give a damn about the church any more as the referendum was about repealing an act which itself was approved in a referendum 35 years ago. The crux of the matter was that even though abortion has been illegal in Ireland they have not stopped people from travelling to the UK for abortion. Therefore, it was said that Irish women will have abortions anyway. The question is where.

There are hudreds or even thousands of American basketball-players in Europe who are just not good enough for the NBA but they are good enough to play in the various European leagues and may be big stars in them. Similarly, there are a lot of canadian hockey-players all over Europe playing in the various leagues and as for some strange reason the rules for representation of different national teams seem to be somewhat liberal there are Canadians playing for many countries even such as Kazakstan or Belorussia. Is it common in your country to think that if you are not good enough for the NHL you will move to Europe and become a Belorussian or a Kazakh?

It seems to me that all people who want to be considered as civilised must have some informed opinion on the Middle-East situation, especially about the Israel/Palestine-issue. My somewhat uncivilised opinion has been all along is to ask what has that got to do with us (Finland). Nothing whatsoever. However, even though Finland counts for nothing and we could count ourselves lucky not to be involved in that hassle some civilised people in our country would very much like us to take sides in that conflict which has nothing to do with us.