You may have missed … here’s a withering critique of Fifa’s handling of the Folarin Balogun red card case by Barney Ronay:

Frites 4 Cheats 1. Tintin 4 Tonto 1. Some good news here, perhaps. It seems Gianni Infantino was right after all. Football has united the world. Mainly football has united the world in gleeful satisfaction at the USA exiting its own World Cup tournament as soon as possible following the great and glorious Donald Trump Mr-Fix-It intervention.

This was the tone of the immediate global reaction to the USA’s invertebrate defeat in Seattle on Monday night, soundly beaten by a righteous and highly motivated Belgium: land of beer, waffles and sporting vigilante justice. Ghent 4 Bent 1. Antwerp 4 A twerp 1. Mayonnaise 4 May-have-interfered-in-due-process 1. I can go on. How long have you got?

So far much of the domestic US response has focused on an interesting but essentially irrelevant part of this, albeit one with a natural appeal to the polarised heart of the nation. Did the noise around Trump’s intervention, the admission, which is denied by Fifa, of prima facie attempted sporting corruption over Folarin Balogun’s ban (Trump’s exact words: “I was the one who got them to do it”) deplete the team’s chances?

Was this a case of Trump Exposed Reactor Core Phenomenon, a term I have just invented for the dynamic whereby Trump melts everything he touches while remaining indestructibly in place, still burping his dark energy into the skies?

The first quarter-final, Morocco v France, might be the most alluring and intriguing of the four ties, with Mohamed Ouahbi’s side – again the only African team to reach the last eight – chasing a second consecutive semi-final. Osasu Obayiuwana has more.

Over the past six decades, Morocco have achieved several performance milestones for Africa at the World Cup. The first country to qualify directly, for the 1970 finals in Mexico, they returned in 1986 and became the first team from the continent to make the last 16, then made that impressive semi-final run in Qatar four years ago.

Even if the Atlas Lions fail to match their 2022 performance, by losing to France on Thursday, they have made tournament history as the first African team to reach the quarter-finals at successive World Cups.

“The general feeling, amongst Moroccans, is pride and contentment in this team,” says Amine El Amri, a football journalist who, from his base in Casablanca, has been closely observing fans’ attitudes toward the team’s performance. “The main goal before the competition was to reach the quarter-finals, given the context, given the change of manager, with the departure of Walid Regragui and the coming of Mohamed Ouahbi. I think the victory over the Netherlands cemented the reputation of Ouahbi as a trustworthy coach. Many doubts about him were cleared up after that match.

“Beating Canada in the way we did, despite having a very difficult first half, has also added to that confidence. You have to be in Casablanca, in Marrakech, in every city and little town, to just measure how happy people are [with the team]. Our Saturday night was crazy – no one slept.”