France’s Kylian Mbappe is pictured wearing a protective face mask during the warm up before a match
| Photo Credit: Reuters

By this stage of the European Championship, favourites France and contenders Belgium would have wanted to be well into their stride and hitting their straps as they enter the knockout stages.

Instead, the neighbours go spluttering into the last 16 and into a head-on collision in Duesseldorf on Monday after both failed to finish top of their first-round group.

France’s much-vaunted attack is suffering from a crisis of confidence and coach Didier Deschamps, usually a steady hand guiding the squad, looks unsure of what his next move will be.

Belgium will have had some motivation sucked out of their cause following an astonishingly hostile reaction from their own supporters after they limped into the next stage of the tournament in Germany.

Despite Wednesday’s draw with Ukraine assuring them progress, they were subjected to loud barracking from their fans and have since closed ranks.

Captain Kevin De Bruyne did not take kindly to the abuse. His attitude and demeanour will set the tone for the rest of the Belgian side as they look to leave behind them the limp performances from the group stage.

Romelu Lukaku needs to find his scoring touch after a number of missed opportunities in the tournament. His record 85 goals for Belgium does not include any from Euro 2024, and overall he has a poor scoring record at major tournaments.

Few would have envisaged a French forward line failing to score in open play in their opening three matches at the tournament. One of their two goals was a penalty from Kylian Mbappe, the other an own goal from Austria in their opening game.

Deschamps must now decide whether to restore Antoine Griezmann to the line-up and pair him up front with Mbappe.

Griezmann no longer the mainstay

Griezmann has been a long-time mainstay for Deschamps but was dropped for their last game, a 1-1 draw with Poland, which allowed Austria to emerge unexpected winners of Group D, which also included the Netherlands.

Belgium is France’s oldest and most frequent opponent. The first international for both countries was a 3-3 draw in Brussels 120 years ago.

Belgium lead the win count of 75 past meetings 30-26 but France won the last two — the semi-final at the 2018 World Cup in St Petersburg and the Nations League semi-final in Turin in October, 2021.

The winner of Monday’s clash at the Duesseldorf Arena will take on Portugal or Slovenia in the quarter-finals.

Kick-off: July 1, 9.30 p.m.

File picture of Kolkata Knight Riders players Sunil Narine and Andre Russell during a practice session ahead of an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 cricket match
| Photo Credit: K.R. DEEPAK

Kolkata Knight Riders will look to extend its recent run of success when it returns home after securing two emphatic away wins.

KKR hosts Mumbai Indians at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on May 11. The faceoff against MI assumes more significance as a victory will ensure a play-off spot for the Knight Riders.

The spate of success, highlighted by the fact that the team has won four of its last five outings, puts KKR on top of the league table with 16 points from 11 matches. This also makes it the favourite against the struggling MI, currently lying in the eighth spot (with eight points from 12 matches). MI is out of the race for a spot in the playoffs.

The opening partnership of Sunil Narine and Phil Salt has been a crucial factor in KKR’s consistent performance. Narine’s belligerence with the bat has been a key element in KKR amassing 200-plus totals in six of the eight innings where it has batted first.

Narine, who has scored 461 runs with a strike rate of 183.67, is in exceptional form that has propelled him as the team’s most successful all-rounder. As a bowler, which is his primary vocation, Narine has been outstanding with an economy rate of 6.61.

Salt, having scored 429 runs with a strike rate of 183.33, has proved to be the right companion for Narine. KKR, which beat MI by 24 runs at the Wankhede Stadium, will be banking on its key players to come good again.

Teams

Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar and Phil Salt.

Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (wk), Nehal Wadhera and Luke Wood.

Match starts: 7.30 p.m. on May 11, 2024