Tuesday 4 September
Molde FK for the U19s in the Uefa youth league. They qualified in their own right by winning the league last season.
Wednesday 5 September
Teal and orange for European away nights… we really like the yellow kit and are not sure why we need a teal and orange but we will give it a chance to grow on us. It has uncomfortable overtones of the jade away shirts – ask your grandfather.
Denmark lost 3-0 to Slovakia with a makeshift squad of futsal players and lower division semi- professionals after their first-team went on strike over image rights.
Thursday 6 September
England U21 were held by the Dutch nil each and are paying the price for trying to put out an England age group team with a Chelsea player in the starting line up. Tammy Abraham as a late substitute, while Mason Mount warmed the bench
Friday 7 September
Wales enjoyed the start of Uefa’s new wheeze the Nations League. On his competitive debut for Wales Ethan Ampadu starred as a defensive midfielder and set up the third goal as Wales beat Ireland 4-1. They call it a competitive match but it is the overblown, absurdly complex Nations League, so who knows if these matches will be recorded by history as competitive or as part of an elaborate joke designed to fool supporters into shelling out more for a glorified friendly.
Germany and France played out a stirring 0-0 to show how much being winners of the Nations League means to the last two World Cup winners.
Eden Hazard and Michy Batshuayi were on target as Belgium took a while to warm up but thrashed Scotland 0-4. The Scots are going to have to do something about the poor state of their game and we don’t mean just sacking the out of date McLeish. Jorginho scored the equaliser from the spot as Italy drew with Poland.
Saturday 8 September
Gareth Southgate’s experiment with a formation without midfielders continued as Spain romped to a 1-2 win at Wembley. It should have been more but a farcical disallowed equaliser at the end allowed the optimists to cling to the straw of injustice once again. Marcos Alonso made his competitive debut for Spain.
Sunday 9 September
Chelsea 0:0 Manchester City
A frustrating draw as the girls created the better chances but looked a little leggy after a week of international fixtures. Good crowd and decent weather but a goal would have made the whole better.
Olivier Giroud scored for France as they beat the Netherlands and had a party to display the World Cup trophy.
Ethan Ampadu made a second competitive start but Wales didn’t look on it in losing 2-0 to Denmark in Aarhus.
