World Cup 2018 LIVE: England prepare for Colombia, Diego Maradona latest, news, predictions, fixtures, schedule

Fifa fine double standard?

Serbian Ambassador to Russia Slavenko Terzic said Friday that he was disappointed that FIFA was biased and demonstrated double standards when fining Serbian and Swiss football teams for unsporting behavior during their match at the World Cup in the Russian city of Kaliningrad.

The complaints come after two swiss midfielders were fined for making "political gestures" during their game against Serbia. Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri both performed a "two-headed eagle" gesture which is said to represent the two-headed eagle on the Albanian flag. Xhaka and Shaqiri are both of Albanian-Kosovan heritage. The pair were fined 10,000 Swiss francs. 

Terzic's complaints come after the Serbian Football Association was fined for crowd disturbances and the display of political and offensive messages by Serbian fans and later fined the association 54,000 Swiss francs.

"I believe that we shouldn't mix politics and sport, it's important to stand aside politics. It seems to me personally that FIFA did not have consistent criteria when fined our team and the Swiss team. She fined our head coach, the Serbian Football Association up to 54,000 Swiss francs [$54,000]and the players of Switzerland were fined 10,000 francs [$10,000]. It is still clear that there are some double standards there," Slavenko Terzic said.

Matic: I "tried to make Mourinho angry" at the World Cup

When speaking to the press following Serbia's exit from the world cup Nemanja Matic said he was intentionally trying to make Manchester United manage Jose Mourinho angry,

“I saw that Mourinho said that he wanted me to go home early,” he said.

“I tried to make him angry! I tried to get Serbia to the group stages, but unfortunately we are out of the World Cup.

“Of course, he wants his players to be fresh for a good pre-season because, as you know, English football is very hard. We have a long championship, we have the Champions League, we have two cup competitions so I understand it, but I gave everything to get us through the group stage.”

Spain won't face 11 men but thousands of fans.

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Speaking at a press conference before the game, Valencia Rodrigo said: "For us the most important thing is to play against Russia right." 

He added: "We will not play against eleven players of Russian national team, but against thousands spectators on the stadium."

VAR is successful says Fifa referees' chairman.

At a briefing in Moscow on Friday, Fifa Referees' Committee chairman Pierluigi Collina emphasised just how important VAR has been in guiding refereeing decisions at the Russia World Cup. This is the first World Cup that has used VAR.

A total of 335 incidents have been checked in the 48 group stage games completed over the last 15 days – 99.3 percent were correct with the aid of VAR; 14 decisions were changed after reviews.

All 122 goals scored to date have been checked. There were 17 VAR reviews – 14 conducted on the pitch by the referee going to view incidents on monitors and three by video assistant referees on factual decisions.

England vs Colombia "biggest knockout tie for a decade"

England coach Gareth Southgate has said that the national side's game against Colombia will be the side's "biggest knockout game for a decade."

The Three Lions boss has described the fixture as the national team's "biggest knockout game for a decade".

"What we have to do is prepare for a thrilling knockout game. Our objective was to qualify from the group and we have done that," BBC Sport quotes Southgate as saying.

"We are still a work in progress but that's not a bad thing at this stage."

Khedira blames himself for World Cup exit.

Sami Khedira has called his performance "inexplicable" after the 2014 World Cup champions took and early exit from the competition during the group stage.

"My personal performance is still inexplicable to me today," Khedira told Bild . "Four weeks ago, everything was perfect. I played the best season of my career in Turin, scored nine goals and had very good performances in the Champions League."

"And then these two games happen to me. I have not experienced that during my entire football career and therefore I have to question myself, why this could be so. My team-mates and I have been quite rightly criticised very hard."

Low number of cards means respect.

Head of the FIFA Referees Committee Pierluigi Collina said on Friday that the low number of yellow cards shown at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia proves that players are respecting their opponents.

"After 48 matches, the average [number of yellow and red cards given] is 3.4. It's absolutely the level of the major club competitions in the world... The number of red cards is definitely lower than the average in those competitions, and I am happy to say that the three red cards given so far are... related to play, one straight red card... and two red cards for second yellow cards... [This is ] something that proves... the respect of the players for their opponents so far has been very good. In terms of yellow cards, we told our referees to be very accurate in protecting the image of the game and the safety of the players, the number is absolutely on the repeating line with figures from major competitions," Collina told journalists.

Rashford wasted his audition.

Former England international player Alan Smith has claimed that Marcus Rashford missed his chance to replace Raheem Sterling in England's starting XI. 

Smith believes that "passive" Rashford squandered his audition in Kaliningrad on Thursday night, with Sterling the better option to face Colombia in the last 16.

"There was quite a ground swell from supporters as much as anything for Marcus Rashford to get a shout [to start for England] and if he'd have put that chance away it would have been a very different situation," he told Sky Sports News. "However, I thought he was a little bit passive at times.​