Football Daily | Canada see off South Africa but fail to quench our endless World Cup thirst

OPEN WIDE FOR SOME (MORE) SOCCER Following the bumper end to the record-breaking group stage in which a whopping 16 Geopolitics World Cup matches were completed over 54 hours, Football Daily has now gone – at the time of writing – nearly 36 hours with just one single GWC match for company and is now experiencing acute withdrawal symptoms; a miserable glimpse into our post-GWC future in which “colleagues”, “families” and “the growing pile of crockery in the sink” will eventually have to be acknowledged and addressed with all the gusto of Steve Bruce at a press conference . There was just that one meagre match, then, to keep the GWC torch burning bright on Sunday, and what a match it wasn’t, as South Africa and Canada played out an absolute stinker, with the first knockout tie containing more missed passes than an episode of Love Island, and fewer shots than James Milner on a stag do. Mercifully, after nearly 100 minutes of goalless anti-football, we were spared an additional half-hour of tedium as Canada’s Stephen Eustáquio struck in stoppage time to send the co-hosts through to the last 16 at the expense of Bafana Bafana . That his side were about as watchable as a Liz Truss YouTube show will not matter one jot to Canada’s USA USA USA head coach Jesse Marsch, who at least kept us entertained just off the pitch by belting out the anthem and literally kissing the badge of his adopted nation. …