REYKJAVIK — England's Raheem Sterling converted a 90th minute penalty to snatch a 1-0 win away to Iceland in their opening Nations League match on Saturday after the home side themselves missed a spot kick in stoppage time that would have salvaged a draw.
Sterling got the decisive goal from the spot, after a disappointingly drab game, when Sverrir Ingi Ingason was harshly ruled to have handled the England striker's shot.
The Czech Republic will go ahead with next week's UEFA Nations League match against Scotland but will field a different team than the one that beat Slovakia on Friday due to COVID-19 concerns, a team spokesman said on Saturday.
Shortly after their 3-1 victory against Slovakia, the Czech FA said in a statement that Monday's game against Scotland would not take place due to the "current situation with COVID-19."
ANNOUNCEMENT:
With a $47 million transfer to Manchester United confirmed on Wednesday, Donny van de Beek was the latest Ajax star to make a high-profile move to a European power. He follows in the footsteps of Hakim Ziyech, who made a $47 million move to Chelsea this summer, as well as Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Light, who made high-profile moves last summer.
Borussia Dortmund star signing and Belgium international Thomas Meunier gave a reporter his frank and honest opinion about what he thinks of the UEFA Nations League. Meunier said that the added strain of this new competition, which begins its second iteration this week, is too much for players.
In a strictly sporting sense, the worst part of the pandemic was definitely the postponement of Euro 2020. On the one hand it deprived us of a month-long carnival of joy (the expanded 2016 tourney was thrilling with Wales and Iceland getting out of pocket and Portugal claiming top prize despite winning only one match in regular time), and on the other it reminded us of how dumb it is to host a major international tournament in 12 different countries (Did you ask for this? I didn’t ask for this).
But the countdown is once again on with Euro 2020 Part Deux just 283 days away!
Lyon won its fifth straight Women’s Champions League title (seventh overall) on Sunday. How on earth do you break OL’s hegemony when they’ve so thoroughly dominated Europe?
Buy all the other best players in the world not on Lyon. At least, that appears to be Chelsea’s plan.
BERN — Europe's national teams will emerge from a 10-month hiatus as the second edition of the UEFA Nations League kicks off this week, still under the shadow the COVID-19 pandemic which brought football to a standstill earlier this year.
There has been no international action in the region since last November and the matches which were played then, such as Italy's 9-1 demolition of Armenia and Germany's 6-1 win over Northern Ireland, now seem to belong to a different era.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin says the single-game knockout format, used in the Champions League this year from the quarterfinal onwards, has produced more exciting football than the usual two-legged games and could be revisited in the future.
The format was changed in order to allow the competition to be completed in a shorter time-span after the COVID-19 pandemic halted play for several months across Europe in March.
Eight clubs headed to Lisbon and the final will be contested later on Sunday, pitting Bayern Munich against Paris St Germain.