Tournament is down to the final two matches

MOSCOW » Here’s a look at what’s coming up at the World Cup, which is down to its last two matches: the third-place game July 14 in St. Petersburg between Belgium and England, and the final the following day in Moscow between France and Croatia:

Elation and exhaustion

The Croats are headed to their first World Cup final ever, if they can just stay on their feet for a few more days. Croatia’s 2-1 win over England in extra time Wednesday night in Moscow made it the first team ever to go extra time in three straight World Cup matches. Factor in injury time and successive shootout wins over Denmark and Russia, and Croatia has just played the equivalent of 4½ matches in 11 days.

They’ll have a little less than four days to rest up for the final against France, which has finished all of its games in regulation and has an extra day to prepare, having beaten Belgium on July 10. Croatia coach Zlatko Dalic is already refusing to use his team’s weariness as an excuse, but just as it was against England, the condition of the players is bound to be a central question in the biggest game Croatia has ever played.

Crowd support

As if the Croats didn’t have enough challenges, now they have to worry about playing again in front of an openly hostile crowd in the 81,000seat Luzhniki Stadium. Or at least one of them does. Dalic’s insistence after the England match that “the whole of the stadium chanted ‘Croatia, Croatia”’ was belied by the fact that a huge chunk of the Russians in the building loudly jeered fullback Domagoj Vida almost every time he touched the ball.

Vida and a team official, both of whom used to play for Ukrainian club Dynamo Kiev, appeared in a proUkraine video posted shortly after Croatia knocked Russia out of the tournament. FIFA let Vida off with a warning , but the Russian fans weren’t so forgiving. Given that booing him is now a thing in Moscow, he can expect another rough reception come July 15.

Misfit match, revisited

England and Belgium have already played each other once in this tournament — a lackluster 1-0 Belgium win in a game both coaches stuffed with reserve players since they’d already qualified for the knockout stage. England coach Gareth Southgate all but conceded he wanted to lose that one so as to avoid a harder route to the semifinal, and his strategy worked, right up until Croatia’s Mario Mandzukic beat England ‘keeper Jordan Pickford in the 109th minute July 11.

Now England and Belgium meet again in the match no one wants to play in.