After the painful 3-0 defeat by Croatia on Thursday night, the Argentina inquest has been long and loud.

Argentina 0 Croatia 3: Not the end. But the beginning of it.

England’s players have been warned about the “truly devastating consequences” of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) given its prevalence in the area around their World Cup base.

Colin Sheridan on Ireland’s footballing philosophy. The Beautiful Game it ain’t.

Thousands of Russians have marched through Moscow to mark two years since opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down outside the Kremlin.

Russia’s preparation for the 2018 World Cup is lurching from crisis to crisis...

A leading Russian opposition politician, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, has been shot dead, Russian officials say.

A member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot has called for foreign countries to boycott February’s Winter Olympics, hours after she was freed from jail.

The two remaining jailed members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been released from prison but one says the amnesty bill that gave her freedom was a Kremlin public relations stunt.

The 11 host cities for the 2018 World Cup in Russia have been announced.

THE Russian historian had always been open about his interest in the dead and eagerly described how he loved to rummage through cemeteries, studying gravestones to uncover the life stories behind them.

THE death toll from an outbreak of killer bacteria centred on Germany jumped to at least 30 as EU and Russian leaders got ready to cross swords over Moscow’s ban on EU vegetables.

IT IS not just the bidding nations that will be waiting anxiously for today’s announcements — fans from all over the world will be wondering where they will be spending their summers in 2018 and 2022, too.

RUSSIA fought a deadly battle yesterday to prevent wildfires from engulfing key nuclear sites as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took to the air in a water-bombing plane to join the firefighting effort.

WILDFIRES were raging close to a shelter housing hundreds of dogs and retired circus animals, animal activists said yesterday, as the death toll from weeks of blazes across Russia rose to 50.

About 30 people have died in the last three days as massive forest fires wiped out villages and vast areas of woodland in Russia, state television reported today.

FOREST fires raged across Russia yesterday, destroying villages, surrounding one southern city and killing at least 20 people, including three firefighters.

A Moscow court sentenced former chess champion Garry Kasparov to five days in jail today for leading an opposition protest.

At least one Briton was among five human rights activists detained in Russia trying to attend a conference commemorating murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

An overcrowded minibus fell through ice after the driver took a shortcut across a frozen river, killing six passengers and injuring the other nine people on board, Russian emergency officials said today.