Third-place playoffs are all-too-often a uniquely pointless spectacle. Routinely loathed by every defeated semifinalists, UEFA don’t even bother staging the fixture in their European Championships.
Yet, in another typically confused wrinkle of the scheduling conundrum that is the UEFA Nations League, Germany and France were forced to battle it out for an unwanted bronze medal on Sunday afternoon.
Beyond the Nations League completists out there, Liverpool fans would have valued the weekend’s contest as one final chance to get a glimpse of Florian Wirtz. As negotiations with Bayer Leverkusen continue for a record-breaking deal, Germany’s outing in Stuttgart could prove to be Wirtz’s last match before signing for Liverpool.
The response to Wirtz’s involvement in a convincing 2–0 defeat on home soil was almost universally unflattering.
