I'm in the press centre and the Aussie commentator next to me is desperately trying to get the Italian journalists to confirm his narrative that the country is only now starting to take women's football seriously, but they keep undermining his assumptions with inconvenient facts.
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QF3: Oranje v Azzurri
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Martens starts, despite injury scare this week. The Dutch apparently asked Fifa to change the kick-off time because of the heat (32 degrees Celsius right now, an hour before kick-off). Fifa, you'll be amazed to hear, declined. Which is good for me as I'm driving straight back to Frankfurt tonight after the game.
I'm sitting next to a hack from the Falkland Islands who works for Penguin News (I'm not making this up). He put a spread-bet fiver on Luton, Lincoln and Leyton Orient to win their respective divisions last season (he went for the three Ls) and won 10.5k. That'll buy him a lot of tinned corned beef ("comes from bloody Argentina").
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He didn't say it was Fray Bentos - he offered me half a corned beef sarnie and said it was from his former occupiers. But frankly, I'm giving zero bollocks either way. (I declined - I hate corned beef.)
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Far fewer Dutch fans here today than were here for the group game against Cameroon two Saturdays ago. Perhaps spontaneous planning is not a Dutch thing.
Edit: I may have to revise that. I go for a piss and by the time I come back there seem to be twice as many fans in the stadium. In town this morning it just didn't seem anything like as full as a fortnight ago. You could probably fit all the Italian fans into a medium-sized pizzeria.Last edited by imp; 29-06-2019, 12:51.
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