{"id":2334,"date":"2018-06-29T12:02:22","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T08:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2018-06-29T12:02:22","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T08:02:22","slug":"today-at-the-world-cup-friday-june-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/06\/29\/today-at-the-world-cup-friday-june-29\/","title":{"rendered":"Today at the World Cup: Friday, June 29"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s the first day of the World Cup without a game, with the group stage over – but there’s plenty going on in Russia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

England sealed what some have termed an easier route to the World Cup final thanks to a 1-0 defeat to Belgium on Thursday, with a much-changed side beaten by former Manchester United midfielder Adnan Januzaj’s second-half strike.<\/p>\n

They will face Colombia in the last-16, thanks to the South American’s 1-0 win over Senegal, which also helped Japan into the knock-out stages courtesy of their Fair Play score – for the first time in World Cup history.<\/p>\n

So the group stages are behind us, and the knock-outs get underway again on Saturday – but the World Cup isn’t going away.<\/p>\n

No games… so what else is on today?<\/h3>\n

A solid 16 days into the World Cup, it’s our first without a game. I know, we’re sad too. But there will be what could be a juicy briefing from FIFA on refereeing, which will likely contain some defence of the often-maligned VAR which has had its ups and downs so far.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, all 16 teams left in the competition will be getting ready for the first round of knockout games, with England’s opponents Colombia training at their Kazan base following their 1-0 win over Senegal yesterday.<\/p>\n

Matt Le Tissier is live on\u00a0Sky Sports News\u00a0<\/em>on Friday morning, with Gary Neville due to feature later in the day after 4pm and Sol Campbell ready to give his reaction to England’s prospects in the last-16 when he appears in the studio at midday.<\/p>\n

What are England doing today?<\/h3>\n

England flew back to their Repino training base early on Friday morning, after finishing top of Group G with their 1-0 defeat to Belgium on Thursday.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Skysports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s the first day of the World Cup without a game, with the group stage over – but there’s plenty going on in Russia. England sealed what some have termed an easier route to the World Cup final thanks to a 1-0 defeat to Belgium on Thursday, with a much-changed side beaten by former Manchester …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2336,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}