Email Beau with your thoughts or tweet @duresportTen things you may have missed at the World Cup
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Jonathan Liew on an intriguing match-up:
The time begins to weigh at this point. Spain have been in New Zealand for a month, braving near-zero temperatures, the strong winds that numb the fingers and carry perfectly adequate long passes out of play, the ennui so acute the whole squad and their families decided to move from their sleepy Palmerston North training base to the centre of Wellington in the middle of the tournament.
The Netherlands, for their part, have been constantly on the move from their Tauranga base in the north of the country: south to Wellington and Dunedin, west to Sydney for their last-16 game, and back again. “So many airports,” their coach, Andries Jonker, said on Thursday. “So many hotels. So many pitches. So many flights. We are the world champions of flying.”
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