Spain v Netherlands: Women’s World Cup 2023 quarter-final – live

Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Jonathan Liew on an intriguing match-up:

The time begins to weigh at this point. Spain have been in New Zealand for a month, braving near-zero temperatures, the strong winds that numb the fingers and carry perfectly adequate long passes out of play, the ennui so acute the whole squad and their families decided to move from their sleepy Palmerston North training base to the centre of Wellington in the middle of the tournament.

The Netherlands, for their part, have been constantly on the move from their Tauranga base in the north of the country: south to Wellington and Dunedin, west to Sydney for their last-16 game, and back again. “So many airports,” their coach, Andries Jonker, said on Thursday. “So many hotels. So many pitches. So many flights. We are the world champions of flying.”

New Zealand is a place that makes you feel its remoteness: not just in the lush rolling landscapes that seem to go on for ever, but in the dislocation of time zones and distance, the unfamiliar weather, the messages back home you know will go unread for another eight hours. And this ride is rewarding and memorable too. But when you have been riding it long enough, it needs to be the right kind of rewards and the right sort of memories.

And so to a quarter-final between two European giants scheduled for the dead of the European night: 3am in Madrid and Amsterdam. It’s not just the players putting in a shift here. Jonker recommended setting an early alarm. Spain’s coach, Jorge Vilda, reckons it’ll probably be easier to just stay up late. That’s northern and southern Europe for you in a nutshell. For all the familiarities between these two coaches and their sides, there are also dividing lines that promise to generate one of the tournament’s most fascinating encounters.

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