England vs Tunisia: Harry Kane's brace stage dramatic win for Three Lions

England and Belgium are off the mark in Group G with a win and both sides can qualify for the knock-out stage in their next matches, while Tunisia face a vital contest against Belgium on Sunday.

England manage a hard-earned victory against a stubborn Tunisia as thanks to a dramatic late winner by Harry Kane. The Tottenham man's brace blow away the North African country in the second match of group G. The closely fought encounter was plagued with miss-passes and ball possession swayed between the two teams frequently. The creativity in midfield and outstanding work rate helped the Three Lions to battle back from an imminent draw.

A brace from captain Kane showed that how important the Tottenham man is for England's success in the tournament. He had shared his desire to emulate Cristiano Ronaldo with a hat-trick of goals. He managed to score a brace but this, undoubtedly, was the biggest moment yet of his international career that gave England’s opening game the happy ending it deserved.

Kane was lurking unmarked, to head in Harry Maguire’s flick-on and, ultimately, nobody could say the result was unjust. The goal made a huge difference as an imminent draw threatened serious ramifications for the rest of Group G.

England were quick on the ball, slick with their passing and attacked with vigour. The pressure on Tunisia was huge but the failure to finish in the attacking third helped Tunisia to hold the scores level till the dying moments of the match.

Kane opened the scoresheet from a corner but Tunisia’s equaliser came from a penalty termed 'controversial' from England’s perspective. Kyle Walker's jutting arm hit Fakhredinne Ben Youssef in the 34th minute that resulted into the penalty.

Southgate's men argued that it was intentional but Walker has a habit of disrupting players this way and on this occasion it backfired. Ferjani Sassi took the penalty, beating Jordan Pickford to the goalkeeper’s right. And, suddenly, England were level again in a game they had been dominating.

John Stones wasted a gilt-edged chance shortly after Tunisia’s penalty, with Dele Alli’s looping back-header being turned against the crossbar moments earlier, and there was also some splendid goalkeeping from Mouez Hassen before he was forced off with a shoulder injury.

Hassen’s reflexes had denied Lingard after only two minutes and Tunisia’s goalkeeper was highly unfortunate for England’s goal.

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FIFA World Cup 2018: Why prosperous nations are more likely to play and win

The more a country and its society give liberty to its people to make choices for their lives, the more likely it is to be a World Cup winner

More than a seventh of humanity watched the 2014 final, where Germany became the champions with a lone goal in the extra time. Unarguably, this makes the 2018 World Cup the most to-be-watched sport tournament, and a question that becomes central to discussion in the office, over tea or lunch, and at parties, is this: Who will win this time?

ALSO READ: Here's how to watch Fifa World Cup 2018 for free in mobile devices

Juxtaposing the general development and economic progress of a country with its perceived chances of winning reveals that the probable semi-finalist teams would be the countries with better social and economic indicators. The world’s top betting players such as Ladbrokes, WilliamHill and 888sport have almost unanimously put Germany, Brazil, France, Spain and Argentina as top five, while Tunisia, Iran, Panama, South Korea and Saudi Arabia as the bottom five.

ALSO READ: An exhaustive guide to FIFA World Cup 2018: Everything you need to know

Income, represented by gross national income per capita; health, represented by life expectancy at birth; and freedom to make one’s choices, represented by an index published in the World Happiness Report are the development indicators used. Though the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the highest per capita income among the 10, the top-five probables have better incomes (see Chart 1) than the least popular teams. It also turns out that the healthier the country, the better is its chance of winning (see Chart 2).

ALSO READ: FIFA World Cup 2018: Snappy facts about every team in the tournament

The more a country and its society give liberty to its people to make choices for their lives, the more likely it is to be a World Cup winner. It must be noted that all these are correlations and not causal relations.

ALSO READ: World Cup 2018: Watch out for these in-form teams eyeing glory in Russia

Interestingly, only two of the 32 teams that are playing the finals are low human development countries, while a majority, 18, are highly developed (see Chart 4). The top-five probable winners are richer and developed than the average of the tournament’s 32 nations, which, in turn, are more prosperous than the global average.

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Here's how to watch Fifa World Cup 2018 for free in mobile devices

Both Airtel and Jio would broadcast the FIFA World Cup 2018 matches for free to their respective subscribers

Fifa World Cup 2018 is about to begin in a few hours from now in Russia, where 32 teams from across the globe would play around 50 matches in a span of one month. The much-awaited football event would attract fans from across countries to watch the action live, either from the stadium or from home. However, it would be a dream come true if the matches could be watched live even on the go.

For Indian fans, that dream has just come true, as telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio have announced free broadcast of 2018 Fifa World Cup matches on their respective mobile television apps.

Here is how to catch the live action on mobile devices

Airtel TV

Bharti Airtel has rolled out an updated Airtel TV app, which would enable users to watch live broadcasts of the upcoming football tournament. Interestingly, the matches will be broadcast in various regional languages in addition to Hindi and English.

Airtel TV users will also have access to match schedules and other updates related to the game, such as exclusive behind-the-scenes match snippets along with match previews or reviews.

The updated app will be available on both the Android and iOS platforms over coming days.

“At Airtel TV, we are driven by the constant desire to offer best content experience to our customers with high relevance value. While T20 cricket tournament received great feedback from our users, we are confident of recreating the same magic with the upcoming football extravaganza as well. We are delighted that the Airtel TV app is fast becoming the go to destination for sports lovers in India,” said Sameer Batra, CEO-Content and Apps, Bharti Airtel.

Reliance JioTV

Reliance Jio also announced that the company would broadcast live Fifa 2018 matches on its mobile television app, JioTV.

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Fifa World Cup 2018: Goldman's AI forecast predicts sixth win for Brazil

Unsurprisingly, Brazil and Germany are the teams appearing most often in World up 2018 forecast models produced by economists

So much for the unpredictable nature of the beautiful game. Goldman Sachs Group Inc reckons Brazil will win its sixth World Cup, basing its forecast on data mining, machine learning and econometrics.

The investment bank is the latest to jump into the excitement before the soccer championship kicks off this week. It used 200,000 statistical models, sifted data on individual players and recent team performance and ran 1 million simulations of the tournament.

As a result, it predicts that Brazil will lift the trophy on July 15. We should note that Goldman also tipped Brazil in 2014 (forecasting a 3-1 win over Argentina in the final). But Brazil stumbled in the semi-final back then, losing by a whopping 7-1 to eventual champions Germany.

ALSO READ: In pics: Here's how Indians are gearing up for Fifa World Cup 2018

Here’s the Goldman explanation in more detail:

“We feed data on team characteristics, individual players and recent team performance into four different types of machine learning models to analyze the number of goals scored in each match. The models then learn the relationship between these characteristics and goals scored, using the scores of competitive World Cup and European Cup matches since 2005. By cycling through alternative combinations of variables, we get a sense of which characteristics matter for success and which stay on the bench. We then use the model to predict the number of goals scored in each possible encounter of the tournament and use the unrounded score to determine the winner.”

- Goldman Sachs, June 2018.

Unsurprisingly, Brazil and Germany are the teams appearing most often in forecast models produced by economists. Danske Bank also picked Brazil in its preview, which would give the South American team a record six titles, while Commerzbank sees Germany lifting its fifth.

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Will Sunil Chhetri surpass Villa's 59 goal record in his 100th match today?

After the match on Saturday he made an impassioned plea to all fans of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo, "abuse us, criticize us but please come to watch the Indian national team"

Sunil Chhetri, one of the greatest footballers the country has produced, will play his 100th international match today when India will take on Kenya in Intercontinental Cup at Mumbai Football Arena. Earlier, in his 99th match, he scored a hat-trick to seal the game for India against Chinese Taipei and equalled David Villa's record of 59 goals. After the match on Saturday, he made an impassioned plea to all fans of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo: “Abuse us, criticize us but please come to watch the Indian national team.” India cricket captain Virat Kohli was the first to support Chettri, urging sports lovers to come forward and watch the national football side play, in an instagram post.

With less than two weeks left for Fifa World Cup 2018 to begin and broadcasters urging fans of the 'beautiful game' to profess their love for their 'doosri country' via hashtags and advertisements, the nation's all-time highest goal-getter demanded some love and affection for their 'first country'.

What Sunil Chettri said in the twitter post

"To all of you who are fans of big European clubs and support European clubs with so much passion and sometimes you guys think that the level is not the same, so why do you waste your time? Agreed, the level is not the same, not even close but with our desire and determination, we will try our best to make your time worth," Chhetri's plea was not only about accepting where they stand but also what little they want from the fans. "To all of you, who have lost hope or don't have any hope in Indian football, we request you to come and watch us in the stadium," the skipper said. Chhetri also requested the critics of Indian football -- please abuse but make the 'Blue Tigers' feel relevant. "I mean it's not fun to criticise and abuse othe n internet. Come to the stadium, do it on our face, scream at us, shout at us, abuse us, who knows one day we might change you guys, you might start cheering for us. You guys have no idea how important you guys are and how important your support is," the skipper appealed.

"I request you all to please come ...Talk about the game, go back home, have discussions, make banners. Please get involved, this is an important time and juncture in Indian football and football in India needs you guys", Sunil Chettri further added.

What Sachin Tendulkar said in the twitter post

In a video posted on his official Twitter account, Tendulkar encouraged fans to support athletes, regardless of which sport they play, and said that it was really important that sports lovers stand behind them.

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