Germany and Holland secured their places at Euro 2020 from qualifying Group C as Northern Ireland were left to try their luck in the play-offs.

As it stands, the Republic of Ireland need to defeat Denmark by two clear goals to be absolutely certain of qualification to Euro 2020.

Rather than feeling bullish about another Dublin cake-walk next month, Denmark manager Åge Hareide is convinced Mick McCarthy will have Ireland better prepared than his predecessor Martin O’Neill.

Ireland’s Alex Wright has finished down the field in 31st in the men’s 20k walk at the World Athletics Championships in Doha.

Borna Barisic's second-half free-kick gave Rangers a 1-0 Ladbrokes Premiership win over St Mirren in Paisley.

Croatia international Ivan Perisic is back in Germany after joining Bayern Munich on a season-long loan.

Last year when Kerry played a Super 8s match in Croke Park, it didn’t exactly fare well in the TV channel-hopping stakes.

Paddy McNair’s first international goal saw Northern Ireland snatch a 1-0 win over Belarus and make it four wins out of four in Euro 2020 qualifying.

Taking a look at what to expect from tomorrow's Euro qualifier against Denmark.

Denmark defender Mathias Jorgensen has seen enough of Ireland in the past 20 months to believe not even Mick McCarthy can extinguish their defensive instincts.

It is a measure of how under much Hugo Lloris is under-appreciated that commentators regularly refer to Harry Kane as Tottenham captain.

Lost, amid the sublime composure of £75 million Virgil van Dijk, the fan-pleasing marauding runs of full-backs Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson and the promise of Joe Gomez, stands Joel Matip, the forgotten centre-half who may have as big a say in tomorrow’s Champions League Final as any Liverpool star.

Mick McCarthy has praised the professionalism of the support the FAI provides to his staff and team, saying the difference between now and when he finished his first stint as Ireland manager 17 years ago is like “night and day”.

John O’Shea ended his professional career to appreciative cheers and a guard of honour as he made his final appearance as a late substitute in Reading’s 0-0 draw with Birmingham City at the Madejski Stadium.

Brazilian legend Pele has been admitted to hospital in Paris.

Mick McCarthy has never had much truck with spin.

John Fallon Denmark’s Henrik Dalsgaard is expecting Mick McCarthy to enrich Copenhagen with an entertaining Ireland side for their crunch Euro meeting in June.

A TD who attended last summer’s World Cup Final with the help of the FAI has said “crossed wires” were to blame for him apparently denying the association had any involvement in his attendance at the match.

Eden Hazard scored twice as Belgium recovered from a blunder by Thibaut Courtois to beat Russia 3-1 last night and start European Championship qualifying campaign on a high.

England rounded off a year to remember by progressing to the inaugural Nations League finals with a stirring comeback against World Cup semi-final foes, Croatia.

Brais Mendez scored on his debut as Spain beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 1-0 at Estadio de Gran Canaria.

Twenty years after their on-field tension rivalry ended, Ian Wright insisted his summer squabble with Roy Keane on the pundits’ couch at the World Cup hasn’t dimmed his respect for the Corkman.

Pep Guardiola admits Joe Hart could make him live to regret the decision to allow him to leave Manchester City.

Almost five years into his reign, at a cost of €10m in wages, Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are, apparently, laying building blocks for the Ireland squad.

Denmark boss Age Hareide has warned the Republic of Ireland not to be fooled by Christian Eriksen’s absence as they attempt to rekindle their Nations League campaign.

Chelsea striker Alvaro Morata considered leaving the club this summer after calling his first season in English football “a disaster”.

Minority sports crave that moment that propels them into the national sporting consciousness. Think Katie Taylor at London 2012 and the O’Donovans in Rio 2016. Hockey Ireland’s Phil Oakley swears that after Irish ’s exploits at the Cricket World Cup in 2007, he saw lads using hurleys to play cricket in Mayfield on Cork’s northside.

Hundreds of thousands of ecstatic French fans celebrated the return of their World Cup winning football team yesterday, jumping and chanting “We are the champions” as their bus paraded down the Champs Elysees before a special presidential reception.

Make sense of it all? Maybe there was no sense to be found in it at all.

Football – zut alors!

It may be meaningless to many, but the unloved third-place play-off match can produce significant ramifications.

After 32 days of unprecedented drama across the fields of Russia, France and Croatia brought the curtain down on the World Cup with Game 64 at the Luzhniki Stadium yesterday. Having traversed the place these past six weeks by foot and bike, car and plane, death-trap taxi and way too many night trains, Joe Callaghan outlines 18 reasons why Russia 2018 was the best World Cup we’ve ever seen…

Belgium’s World Cup squad were welcomed as heroes in Brussels yesterday, after achieving their best-ever World Cup result in Russia, and were rewarded with the country’s national dish: A bowl of chips.

France have won the World Cup after beating Croatia 4-2 in the final in Moscow.

My first World Cup memories go back to 1966 when I would have been 10 and at a stage in my childhood where I was really becoming obsessed with football.

And then there was one. Well, two actually, but the World Cup third-place play-off is definitely one of those nominally competitive fixtures which presents a fairly robust challenge to my old friend Declan Lynch’s wise maxim that there’s never a good reason not to watch a football match.

“I’ll keep it simple for you – I’m getting paid to be at a World Cup and you’re on your laptop"

In our Hadron Collider and text-anyone-anywhere-anytime world, it may seem slightly embarrassing to acknowledge what a powerful force old-fashioned tribalism remains. Yet, that force of nature, or at least human nature, is active all around us and sometimes in ways that may not be as admirable as we might wish.

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What this World Cup could really do with is a team to capture the imagination, says Brendan O’Brien.

"Why are you showing this?"

The vagaries of the group stage format at a Fifa World Cup were laid bare in the final round of fixtures as England’s reserves laboured to a 1-0 defeat against Belgium, safe in the knowledge that finishing second in Group G probably opens up a better route to the final.