The semi-final line-up may not be complete at the World Cup but for RT\u00c9 soccer analysts Shay Given and Alan Cawley, it’s shaping up to be a final between France and England.<\/p>\n
The French secured their spot in the last-four after beating Morocco 2-0 on Thursday<\/a> and will await either Spain or Belgium.<\/p>\n England, meanwhile, still need to try and overcome Norway, while Argentina or Switzerland would await should they advance to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n But speaking on the RT\u00c9 Soccer Podcast<\/a>, former Republic of Ireland, Newcastle and Manchester City goalkeeper Given felt that it was possible to start going out on a limb in regard to the potential 19 July match-up at New York New Jersey Stadium.<\/p>\n “I’m probably getting ahead of myself… I can only see a French-English final,” he said.<\/p>\n \n Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I think England will beat Argentina in the semi. But I do believe Argentina will get Switzerland out of way.<\/p>\n “It feels like that’s where all roads are leading to a France-England final. “<\/p>\n Former Shelbourne and Dundalk midfielder Cawley was in agreement and added that the fraught nature of Argentina’s knockout games might catch up with them if the reigning champions get to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n “The reason I think what’s going to kill them is those extra times, like even the other night,” he said referencing the late comeback against Egypt<\/a>.<\/p>\n “They were going full tilt just to get back (into the game), the amount of energy they expended just to get back in the game.”<\/p>\n He added: “But I’m with (Shay) on I think France and England it’s set up lovely for the two of them, and I honestly England win this.<\/p>\n “Now I’ve said it from day one, England have unbelievable chance. You were all here, ‘(the performances against) Panama, Ghana, they’re all the rubbish, get rid of them…’ and I said they will come good.<\/p>\n “They will come good against the stronger teams. And here we go. They have an unbelievable chance. Now it’s all opened up for them on that side of the draw as well.”<\/p>\n Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The semi-final line-up may not be complete at the World Cup but for RT\u00c9 soccer analysts Shay Given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-543743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}