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Blair says Labour needs debate before selecting new leader as he criticises Burnham speech – UK politics live | Politics

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2 months ago

May 27, 2026

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Blair says Labour needs debate about policy before it chooses new leader, as he criticises Burnham’s 40 years of failure claim

In his Today interview, Tony Blair said Labour needed to work out its policy agenda before choosing a leader.

Asked what he would say to Labour members being asked to choose between Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting, Blair replied:

My advice is choose your direction first and make sure that before you have any leadership change, you make all the candidates set out in detail their policy, what the Government’s got right, what it’s got wrong, what we should do differently.

While Blair praised Burnham in general terms, he also said the Greater Manchester mayor was wrong to argue, as he did in a speech last week, that government policies over the past 40 years have let voters down.

Blair said:

I hope Andy wins Makerfield, I think he’s a great guy, I want to see him in parliament.

But you know, when he does this thing about 40 years of wasted … what, nothing good happened in that period of Thatcher with the business community, or New Labour?

I don’t think he really means that, but what I’m saying, if you’re going to change leader, you’ve really got to force people to say where they stand, because otherwise you’ll be in what I think was always a problem for Keir – and I’ll be very honest about this, and I like him and I wish him well – but when we switched from that Corbyn agenda, there wasn’t enough explanation.

Not as to why Corbyn was an election loser, that was pretty obvious, but why the whole agenda was wrong.

You have to explain to people why it’s wrong if you want to lead the party in the future in a coherent way.

Key events

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, posted this on social media about Tony Blair’s latest intervention this morning.

Tony Blair.

What the billionaire class have paid for.

And in a post commenting on a Guardian story headlined “Tony Blair says Labour must abandon net zero, support Trump and move firmly to the right”, Patrick Harvie, the former co-leader of the Scottish Greens, said:

Spot the difference between “Tony Blair says” and “Nigel Farage says”

Reform UK accused of being ‘soft on Putin’ after revelation about candidate seemingly backing invasion of Crimea

David Cameron was ahead of his time when in 2009 he warned against the dangers of social media, and Twitter, with the quip “too many twits might make a twat”. They are not laughing in Reform UK where Robert Kenyon, the party’s candidate in Makerfield, is now being faced every day with a barrage of questions about historic social media posts that were sexist, offensive – or worse.

Some of them were covered on the blog yesterday, here and here. As Peter Walker reports, in other messages Kenyon appeared to express doubt over the seriousness of Covid and the efficacy of vaccines for the virus.

But new revelations are potentially even more awkward for Reform UK.

As Pieter Snepvangers and Charles Hymas report in the Telegraph, a post has emerged showing Kenyon saying that Russia was “within their rights” to invade Crimea in 2014.

In an online forum, in response to someone who posted in March 2014, just after the Russian invastion of Crimea, saying “the people of the Crimea want to be in Russia, for me that is democracy in action”, Kenyon replied:

I agree totally, Russia are well within their rights to do what they have done, as we did with the Falklands. However, will Latvia be next?

Robert Kenyon social media post Photograph: Daily Telegraph

In response, a Reform UK spokesperson told the Telegraph:

At no point did Rob explicitly support or endorse Russia’s actions in Crimea. He is fully opposed to Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine. We fully back Cllr Kenyon. He is an excellent local candidate, who we are confident will be a superb MP for Makerfield.

But this comment is unlikely to stop Kenyon’s post as being seen as fresh evidence of Reform UK’s pro-Russia leanings. Nigel Farage has supported the Kremlin argument that Brussels provoked the Russia-Ukraine war by offering Ukraine EU membership, and Nathan Gill, the party’s former leader in Wales, was jailed for taking bribes to deliver pro-Russia speeches when he was an MEP.

Commenting on the Telegraph story, Luke Pollard, a defence minister, said:

Nigel Farage has again chosen a candidate who promotes Kremlin talking points and makes excuses for Putin’s unacceptable actions against Ukraine.

While we stand with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, Robert Kenyon has shown he’s completely out of step with the British people.

And James Cartlidge, the Conservative defence spokesperson, said:

Nigel Farage must immediately condemn Robert Kenyon’s posts justifying Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Crimea.

For too long, Reform has tolerated pro-Russian voices who excuse Putin and his brutal actions towards Ukraine.

The Conservatives are and will always be clear, we stood with Ukraine in Government and we stand with Ukraine today. If Nigel Farage is unable to condemn his candidate in Makerfield, it will only show that Reform are soft on Putin, soft on Russia.

Donald Tusk says defence treaty he’s signing with Starmer means UK’s pledge to Poland goes beyond Nato guarantees

Jakub Krupa

Jakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said a new Polish-British defence and security treaty to be signed today in London will focus on countering the long-term, strategic threat posed by Russia.

Briefing reporters before leaving for the UK, Tusk suggested the treaty – to be named after the RAF Northolt base which hosted Polish pilots during the second world war – will go beyond previous deals agreed in 2017 and 2023, and include provisions for mutual security assistance outside Nato’s article 5 framework.

Tusk said the bilateral treaty would mean Poland could count on the UK for a “rapid bilateral response … before a decision is made by all 32 Nato members” in the event of a conflict.”

He went on:

And as you know, in today’s reality … speed of response, adequate response, is something that will matter in a conflict.

The treaty also includes provisions on military cooperation, including procurement, drones, air defence and cybersecurity.

Britain already has similar deals with France and Germany, while Poland signed a similar agreement with Paris last year.

Blair hits out at Guardian, as he defends his stance on Trump, and being part of US president’s “Board of Peace”

It is not just Keir Starmer and almost every other senior figure in the Labour party who have been getting it in the neck from Tony Blair today. In his Today interview, Blair was asked by Nick Robinson about the Guardian pointing out that Blair is urging the UK government to get closer to Donald Trump. That provoked Blair to reply like this.

The Guardian – you’ve got to love them. I always used to say when I was prime minister that the most the greatest source of election losing advice was always from the Guardian.

On Trump, Blair said:

I’m not saying the Labour party should love Donald Trump, get close to Donald Trump. I’m simply saying the American relationship matters to Britain.

Blair also defended his role as a member of the executive board for Trump’s “Board of Peace”. He said:

We put together a plan that ended the war [in Gaza]. Now, at the moment, you’ve still got some fighting going on. You’ve still got a dire situation for the people.

This next week we will have further negotiations with Hamas because we need to move this new government into Gaza. And we need Hamas to agree that this government should be in control of Gaza.

So it’s a very tricky, difficult situation.

But we have if the plan is allowed to work, it will give Gazan people a fresh start with a new Palestinian government and a large amount of funding behind it.

Blair said Trump’s “Board of Peace” itself was sitting leaders. He said he sat on its executive board, which served underneath it.

(After it was launched, the Board of Peace was memorably described as looking like “a cast of Bond villains, plus Tony Blair”.)

Blair does not deny contemplating launching new centrist party during Corbyn era

In his Today interview, Tony Blair was asked by Nick Robinson about reports that, during the Jeremy Corbyn era, he considered setting up a new party. Robinson said that Blair’s long essay read like it had been written by a man “who wishes he had done it”.

In response, Blair did not deny the central claim. He said:

No, I don’t wish I’d done it.

But I think a lot of the issues that were raised at the time are still there and with us.

Look, my whole belief about the Labour party, it’s had 120 years of of history. It’s been in power really for about a quarter of that time. And the reason for that is what I always call the birth defect of the Labour party, when you separated the liberal progressive side from the Labour side, and New Labour was an attempt to fuse those two things back together. And that’s why we won successive elections.

The trouble is, since then we’ve moved away from that. And you do have, I think, this unrepresented centre in British politics. And I think it’s basically a supply problem and not a demand problem.

Blair never got anywhere with his plans to launch a new party, but it has been reported that this went beyond idle talk, and that people were approached about funding the project. This is what Tom McTague, now editor of the New Statesman, said about this in an UnHerd article last year.

In public, Blair insisted that he was not in any way “advocating a new party, organising one, or wanting to vote for one”. However, he had concluded that the Labour party was finished, according to someone who shared his views, and was involved in discussions about a new party. “He would tell those who thought otherwise that they were being nostalgic,” said the same associate. “He felt that too many in the party could not reconcile themselves to the reality that Labour was simply irrecoverable, passed its sell-by date.”

Blair says Labour should get rid of Ed Miliband’s net zero targets

Tony Blair has also given an interview to Times Radio. In it, he said the government should abandon its net zero target – implying that, if that meant Ed Miliband felt obliged to resign as energy secretary as a result, he would not view that as a problem.

Asked if he was proposing getting rid of Miliband’s net zero targets, Blair replied:

Yes, I am, and I’ll tell you exactly why.

It’s not that I’m against renewable energy, clean energy, and it’s not that I’m a climate denier.

It’s coming to terms with this reality: the three biggest emitters in the world today are China, America and India. Together they account for just over 50% of global emissions.

All of them are pursuing cheap energy and electrification. Doesn’t mean to say they’re not doing renewable energy, China builds more renewable energy than the rest of the world put together.

It just means that the lens through which they judge policy is cheap energy and the need for electrification, particularly in the age of AI.

Britain’s emissions are under 1% of global emissions, we can’t solve climate change, and to impose costs on our own businesses and consumers in order to accelerate net zero when the rest of the world is not doing so – I don’t understand the logic behind it, or shutting down our own oil and gas industry in circumstances where, again, I don’t know another country in the world that’s doing that.

This is more or less exactly the Conservative party’s position on net zero.

Asked if adopting this approach would made Miliband’s position untenable, Blair replied:

It’s really a question of explaining to the country, and to Ed, that right now we need to get growth levels up, we need to recognise with this AI revolution that we’re going to need cheap energy.

Blair and Miliband have been at odds with each other for more than a decade. Blair wanted Miliband’s brother David to win the Labour leadership contest in 2010, and he thought Miliband as leader was wrong to disown some of New Labour’s policies.

Blair says Labour needs debate about policy before it chooses new leader, as he criticises Burnham’s 40 years of failure claim

In his Today interview, Tony Blair said Labour needed to work out its policy agenda before choosing a leader.

Asked what he would say to Labour members being asked to choose between Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting, Blair replied:

My advice is choose your direction first and make sure that before you have any leadership change, you make all the candidates set out in detail their policy, what the Government’s got right, what it’s got wrong, what we should do differently.

Blair said:

I hope Andy wins Makerfield, I think he’s a great guy, I want to see him in parliament.

But you know, when he does this thing about 40 years of wasted … what, nothing good happened in that period of Thatcher with the business community, or New Labour?

I don’t think he really means that, but what I’m saying, if you’re going to change leader, you’ve really got to force people to say where they stand, because otherwise you’ll be in what I think was always a problem for Keir – and I’ll be very honest about this, and I like him and I wish him well – but when we switched from that Corbyn agenda, there wasn’t enough explanation.

Not as to why Corbyn was an election loser, that was pretty obvious, but why the whole agenda was wrong.

You have to explain to people why it’s wrong if you want to lead the party in the future in a coherent way.

Blair suggests Labour was wrong to protect pensions triple lock

In his Today interview, Tony Blair said the government should have done more to prioritise growth when it took office. He also suggested the pensions triple lock was not sustainable.

He said:

When it came in, it saw the state of the inheritance. I think at that point, of course, it would be difficult. Everything in politics is difficult, but if I’d been them, I’d say, look, all of these commitments, they may be very worthwhile. There may be proper commitments in easy times, but in these hard times, we’ve got to prioritise growth. We’ve got to prioritise support for the business sector, and this artificial intelligence revolution, we’ve got to grasp it, both its opportunities and its risks, with both hands.

And so, I think, yes, it would have been tough, but I think you could have explained to the country why it was necessary …

At some point you’ve got to be able to stand up and have an honest debate with the public, which is to say, look, ultimately we’re probably taxing people too much, spending too much, borrowing too much at the moment.

If we carry on like this with these large increases in incapacity benefit, with the triple lock on pensions, we’re going to create a situation where economically we’re not, we’re not able to grow because we put such a weight affecting growth on the back of our economy.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves did claim they were prioritising growth when they took office. But business leaders claim that higher taxes, especially the rise in employer national insurance, and stronger rights for workers have been bad for growth.

They have also kept the pensions triple lock because they pledged to do so in the 2024 manifesto. With the other main parties also committed to it in 2024, not promising to keep it was seen as too much of an electoral risk.

Blair says Labour won 2024 election because it was ‘acceptable alternative’, not because of its manifesto

In his interview on the Today programme, Tony Blair said Labour won the election in 2024 because it was “an acceptable alternative” – not because voters liked what was in its manifesto.

He said:

Let’s be clear, I don’t think Labour won the last election because people read the manifesto and said, ‘this is what we want’.

I think people thought that Conservatives have behaved completely unacceptably, and to Keir Starmer’s great credit, the Labour party was an acceptable alternative.

Minister rejects Blair’s critique of Starmer’s government, accusing ex-PM of retreading arguments from Labour’s past

Good morning. Labour is in the midst of ‘phoney war’ leadership contest. The formal bit has not started yet, but Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting are already actively engaged, Angela Rayner is taking an interest, and Keir Starmer is defending his legacy with renewed vigour. The last thing anyone expected was for Tony Blair to join in.

But he has, sort of, with a 5,700-word essay, published last night on his thinktank’s website, setting out where the former PM thinks his part is going wrong (on most things, it seems) and what he thinks it should do next. Blair, of course, won’t be a candidate in the leadership contest, but ideas matter in politics and this essay is chock-full of them.

Here is Jessica Elgot’s story on what he says. She says Blair has accused Starmer, Burnham and Streeting of putting Labour’s future at risk by abandoning the centre ground, warning that the party’s “almost infinite capacity for self-delusion” means it is likely to lose the next election.

And here is Peter Walker’s analysis.

Peter says the Blair essay is the work of “a man who worries deeply that the party he once led, plus the UK more widely, is stuck in a loop of insular political debate, not even beginning to get to grips with what he portrays as the century-defining challenge – and opportunity – of AI”. But Peter also points out that many in Labour are likely to regard Blair’s “call for a move to the ‘radical centre’ as somewhere between vague and meaningless”.

Quite a lot of what Blair says sounds as if it could have been written by Kemi Badenoch. Any other Tory leader would be championing this as vindication. But Badenoch seems to approach any argument on the basis that whatever someone from the left is saying must always be wrong, and she has not commented yet; perhaps she is still trying to compute how she and a former Labour PM could have ended up in the same place.

Blair has been on the Today programme this morning, and I will post highlights from his interview soon. Dan Tomlinson, a junior Treasury minister, has been the government voice in the broadcast studios and he has had the awkward job of trying to rebut criticism from the party’s most successful election winner. Tomlinson was respectful about Blair, and said he agreed with him on some points, but essentially he accused Blair of resurrecting old arguments about Old Labour v New Labour and not accepting that the world has moved on. He told BBC Breakfast:

I think [Blair’s] essay was about whether we’re New Labour or old Labour – that was a debate that was happening in the 1990s in the UK, which was pretty much around the time I was born. Things have moved on a lot since then.

And, on Times Radio, where he said the Old Labour/New Labour split was “just not where we are today”, Tomlinson said:

If we look at the jobs market, when Tony Blair was prime minister there weren’t really any people on zero-hour contracts. Now there are hundreds of thousands of people struggling with that uncertainty, so, yes, we are passing our employment rights legislation to give people more certainty in work.

There will be a lot more to say about the Blair essay, and reaction to it, as the day goes on.

There is not much in diary today – parliament is in recess – but we will see Starmer today when he signs a new defence treaty with Poland with Donald Tusk, the Polish PM, at an event outside London around lunchtime.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.

If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.

I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

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Driver killed in Bedford train crash named

Published

2 months ago

June 21, 2026

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The family of Shaun Burton, say they are “devastated” by the loss.

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Spain v Saudi Arabia: World Cup 2026 – live | World Cup 2026

Published

2 months ago

June 21, 2026

info@oxinfo.co.uk

Key events

In the opening half an hour against Cape Verde, Mikel Oyarzabal, the centre-forward, did not get a single touch.

Oyarzabal profile

Kyle Green gets in touch: “Your highlighting of Lalas and his absurdity is something that has prevented me from wanting to watch the coverage on Fox. While every channel has its pros and cons I just can’t.

“I’m 45 and probably the youngest of anyone who remembers him as a player instead of an opinionated insert insult here. As for the match this could be more competitive than it looks on paper Spain need a win the pressure is on them. Saudi Arabia could hold out for a draw and see what happens in their last match. “

News from the England camp, and it seems to be good news on Declan Rice.

“I’m ready and fit, raring to go. I was feeling a little bit of neural pain in my hamstring, which I was managing from after Christmas with Arsenal for a very long time. Obviously, not a lot of people would have known that. It was all behind-the-scenes stuff but it was a smart decision.

“In the end, that last 20 minutes is probably where you pick up the most, and it’s where you play a 70-minute match. But that last 20 is where you really feel your body going for it. And I think it was a smart decision because the last few days I felt really, really good.”

Alex Reid has penned today’s weekend special Football Daily.

Portugal v Uzbekistan on Tuesday enticingly pits the incredibly nice, incredibly 41-year-old-superstar-tolerant Roberto Martínez against Fabio Cannavaro, who’s won a Ballon d’Or as a player and the Chinese Super League as a coach. While the fixture following that game really does see the dream of Thomas Tuchel – in his first international job with England – taking on Queiroz, who is in charge of his ninth national side with Ghana.

The expected formations are 4-2-3-1 for Spain, and 5-3-2 for the Saudi Arabians.

The Saudi team features two Donis changes: Ali Lajami, a defender, and Nasser Al Dawsari, a midfielder, are preferred to Mohammed Abu Al Shamat and Mohamed Kanno. You may recall Salem Al Dawsari, the Saudi captain, as the man who scored the winner against Argentina.

An entertaining read, even for those of us who have just seen the clips.

In a conversation where his co-panelist is casually reminiscing about his days playing alongside Messi or exchanging shirts with Ronaldo Nazário at the World Cup, what exactly is Lalas going to talk about – coming on as a second-half substitute for Earnie Stewart in a friendly against Scotland in 1998? Helping the Kansas City Wizards finish last in the 1999 MLS Western Conference? Did Lalas enjoy an elite playing career? No. But does he do the background reading that could compensate for his relative lack of standing in a conversation with titans like Henry and Zlatan? Also no. But is he charming or funny or charismatic or otherwise magnetic on screen? Eh, no.

For the record, I once interviewed Alexi Lalas on the challenge of playing against Romario in the 1994 World Cup. He had this to say:

“He could kill you in so many different ways. If you remember from that World Cup, he scored so many types of goals. That ranged from solo adventures to an outside-of-the-right-foot half-volley off a corner kick. Romario was both the most difficult to play against and the best that I have faced.

“Roberto Baggio was doing his thing, but in terms of consistency and living up to the hype, he [Romario] was the best. As with all stars, there was a moment when the fans sit up in their seats, and that was a feeling I got with Romario. When it got close to him and the potential for his involvement in a play was there, everybody sat up in their seat. They knew that something spectacular would be happening.”

Saturday’s match reports here.

The Saudi Arabia coach, and Blackburn legend, Georgios Donis, spoke about the challenges facing his team: “Spain is not the same ⁠team when Yamal or Williams are on the bench.

“While they still have plenty of possession, they lack the individual one-on-one penetration when these two are ⁠missing. I’m not saying it’s a problem for Spain, but when those players are missing, they play in a different way. We saw this very clearly against ‌Cape Verde.

“We are playing against one of the best teams in the world, and it’s very important that when you play against these kinds of teams, you ‌should enjoy the experience and respect the opponent, but not too much.

“It is very hard for any team playing against Spain to have any time in possession. So what we must do is to be more in control of our movement and compact, and when the ball goes through the lines, be able to defend dynamically.

“It’s nice to see miracles in football, and we’ve seen favourites losing against underdogs. Of course, it’s great for Saudi football to have a great memory of the result against Argentina, but we aren’t drawing anything from that.

“I think we’ll feel more pressure in that [Cape Verde] game than we will against Spain.”

The Spain coach, Luis De La Fuente had this to say in his Saturday press conference: “This generation of footballers is highly competitive and really fired up… It’s going to be a completely different story,” he said at his pre-match press conference on Saturday. There is no drama or crisis. The bottom line is simply that we need to win tomorrow.”

Four changes for Spain: Lamine Yamal, Pedro Porro, Dani Olmo and Alex Baena also come into the side with Marcos Llorente, Fabian Ruiz, Ferran Torres and Gavi dropping out.

The teams – Lamine Yamal starts

Spain: Simon, Porro, Cubarsi, Laporte, Cucurella, Gonzalez, Rodri, Yamal, Olmo, Baena, Oyarzabal. Subs: Raya, Joan Garcia, Pubill, Grimaldo, Eric Garcia, Llorente, Merino, Torres, Fabian, Gavi, Pino, Williams, Zubimendi, Munoz, Iglesias.

Saudi Arabia: Al Owais, Abdulhamid, Tambakti, Lajami, Al Amri, Al Harbi, Nasser Al Dawsari, Al Khaibari, Al Juwayr, Al Buraikan, Salem Al Dawsari. Subs: Al Aqidi, Al Kassar, Majrashi, Yahya, Al Shehri, Al Boushal, Kadesh, Al Johani, Al Ghannam, Al Hajji, Al Hamdan, Mandash, Kanno, Thakri, Abu Al Shamat.

Referee: Raphael Claus (Brazil)

Perhaps one of the Saudi -players can write themselves into this high-grade selection?

Perhaps it can be their goalkeeper.

Al-Aqidi profile

Madrid screening of Spain v Saudi Arabia cancelled due to heat

The public screening of Spain’s World Cup match against Saudi Arabia in Madrid on Sunday has been cancelled because of extreme heat forecast for the Spanish capital, officials said.

The match, due to kick off at 6pm local time on Sunday, had been scheduled to be shown on a giant screen installed by the Spanish football federation (RFEF) at a fan zone in Plaza de Colón in central Madrid.

Madrid city council and the federation decided to cancel the screening after national weather agency AEMET issued an orange heat warning – the second-highest level – for the Madrid region, with temperatures forecast to reach 40C.

“The decision has been taken with the aim of protecting the health of attendees, event staff and support services involved in the event,” Madrid city hall said in a statement, apologising for any inconvenience.

Officials urged supporters to watch the match indoors in air-conditioned spaces and avoid prolonged exposure to the heat.

Large parts of Spain are experiencing unusually high temperatures for June as a mass of hot air from North Africa moves across the Iberian Peninsula.

A total of 13 of Spain’s 17 regions are on orange alert for heat on Sunday, while the northern Basque Country bordering France is on red alert, the highest level.

Authorities advised residents and visitors to take precautions during the heatwave, including drinking water regularly, staying in cool environments, limiting outdoor physical activity during the hottest hours of the day and taking extra care of vulnerable people. AFP

Can Saudi Arabia repeat the magic of 2022?

Argentina arrived in Qatar on a 36-game unbeaten run. When Lionel Messi opened the scoring from the penalty spot after 10 minutes, a comfortable afternoon seemed in the offing. Saleh al-Shehri and Salem al-Dawsari had other ideas, Argentina had three goals disallowed for offside in the space of 13 minutes and the greatest comeback in Saudi Arabia football history was made. Argentina went on to lift the trophy, while defeats to Poland and Mexico meant the Saudis did not reach the knock-out stage.

Unai Simon over David Raya is a controversial choice for De la Fuentes. The Arsenal keeper could lay claim to being Europe’s best this season.

“Those at the Champions League final had a few more days, so I got there on the Wednesday night,” Raya says. “I arrived a bit before Fabián [Ruiz]. I was saying hello to some of the others in reception when he arrived. I went to say congratulations; that was almost the first thing I did. I couldn’t really talk [to him] after the final; I just didn’t have it in me. The next day we talked about the game properly. Just two mates chatting … I was happy for him that he could lift the trophy for a second time.”

A high pressure game for the European champions, as Sid Lowe reports.

“If we had scored one, the game would have changed,” Martín Zubimendi said. Immediately after the game, De la Fuente had offered a simple analysis: when the ball doesn’t want to go in it doesn’t want to go in, he insisted. Spain had racked up 27 shots, after all. Ferran Torres had hit the bar and seen another clear opportunity saved. Vozinha, the 40-year-old goalkeeper who stopped that, saved six more and was named the man of the match. “There’s nothing to reproach the team for,” Rodri said. “We generated chances but couldn’t put it away; the good thing is they created almost nothing.”

We wait to see what role Lamine Yamal will play today. His coach would surely like to be able to use him.

The worst mistake we could make would be to compare him to anyone. He is the midst of a process. He has exceptional footballing maturity and lives it all with total naturalness. He has great serenity and strength. We have to let him follow his path but those players who have something different are ready for that. They’re geniuses, like Dalí [who] can paint a picture, or Michelangelo. They’re different. What is exceptional to us, isn’t to them. In those extremes, they feel comfortable. Why? Because they are different. What we think is exceptional, they consider normal.

Lamine Yamal profile

Preamble

Spain’s campaign did not get off to a flying start, and Luis de la Fuentes may wake up in the night to visions of Cape Verde’s Vozinha. He will have Georgia on his mind ever since Monday. Saudi Arabia are no pushovers and gave Uruguay a scare in their opening match. Memories of downing Argentina four years ago still abound, and so Spain might beware. They can ill afford to go into the final game with Uruguay at a disadvantage. All eyes on Lamine Yamal, whose fitness situation remains opaque, though Spain need their other forwards to come to the party.

Kick-off 5pm UK, 1pm ET, 2am AEST. Join me.

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