Lukaku double drives Belgium

Belgium should not blame Romelu Lukaku for their World Cup exit despite the striker's misses in the goalless draw against Croatia which sealed their fate on Thursday, said Timothy Castagne.

Lukaku, Belgium's record goalscorer, had only played a handful of minutes in the tournament due to injury before coming on at half-time at the Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium.

The striker, on loan at Inter Milan from Chelsea, missed three gilt-edged chances late on when a goal would have sent his side into the last 16.

"I wouldn't say he's the anti-hero because he's there for the chances, he also creates them, he gives, he keeps the ball," defender Castagne told reporters.

"Maybe if he's not there, we don't have those chances. I don't think we can blame him, he gave everything, he tried. If it doesn't go in, it doesn't go in."

Belgium finished third in Group F on four points after also beating Canada 1-0 and losing 2-0 to Morocco.

Michy Batshuayi scored their only goal of the tournament against the Canadians but was not called upon on Thursday.

"Of course I'm disappointed, we're eliminated, we're out of the competition," he said.

"I'm a striker and I would have liked to do my job and score, help the team.

"It's disappointing to go out like that... Belgium had to play better. I'm not going to say that we don't deserve to be out, but we should have played better. Everything is disappointing."

Romelu Lukaku scored his first Roma goal in Sunday's 7-0 demolition of Empoli, his new team's first win of the Serie A season.

Belgium forward Lukaku rolled in Roma's sixth in the 82nd minute of a dominating performance in which talisman Paulo Dybala also got off the mark for the season with a brace.

Strikes from Renato Sanches, Bryan Cristante and Gianluca Mancini, as well as a comical Albert Grassi own goal ensured a rout against pointless, goalless and rock-bottom Empoli which moved Roma out of the relegation zone and up to 12th on four points.

"It's obviously important for strikers to score goals," said coach Jose Mourinho to DAZN.

"It was perfect for him as he scores in front his fans and he leaves the field happy.

"He needs to feel loved and wanted. He's come here and he felt immediately that the team needed him."

Lukaku made his first start alongside Dybala in an attack built to help Roma qualify for the Champions League for the first time since 2018.

On loan from Chelsea, Lukaku made a substitute appearance in Roma's loss to AC Milan before the international break and had a largely low key evening against Empoli apart from his simple finish from Andrea Belotti's pass.

Only 35 seconds had passed when Sebastian Walukiewicz handled Rasmus Kristensen's cross. Dybala to rammed home his first goal of the campaign from the penalty spot.

Kristensen was key again when Sanches doubled the hosts' lead in the eighth minute, swinging in another cross from which the unmarked Portugal international guided home a perfect header.

Lukaku was involved in Roma's bizarre third, laying off to Cristante before Bartosz Bereszynski whacked the ball off his Empoli teammate Grassi and watched the ball drift into his own goal.

Dybala netted his sublime second 10 minutes after the break when he collected Cristante's pass, sent Sebastiano Luperto packing with a feint and rolled in a cool finish.

Lukaku on target 

The Argentina forward would have ended the night with a hat-trick had his free-kick not thwacked the crossbar moments before he was substituted in the 64th minute.

The match seemed to be rolling towards an otherwise uneventful end but Cristante started a late flurry in the 79th minute when he drove home Roma's fifth from long range.

The stage was set for Lukaku to lap up the applause of fans who swamped an airport to greet his arrival in Rome last month. A Mancini header wrapped up the scoring with four minutes remaining.

Christian Kouame shot Fiorentina to a 3-2 win over Atalanta with the decisive strike in Sunday's entertaining Serie A clash in Florence.

Ivorian Kouame pounced on defensive indecisiveness in the 76th minute to prod home his first goal of the season and move Fiorentina up to seventh.

Giacomo Bonaventura and Lucas Martinez-Quarta scored Fiorentina's other goals at the Stadio Artemio Franchi as the hosts moved level on seven points with champions Napoli and Frosinone, 4-2 winners over Sassuolo earlier in the day.

Eusebio Di Francesco's Frosinone won a Serie A game from a losing position for the first time in their history.

They came back from being two goals down in the first 25 minutes to claim an impressive home win thanks to a Walid Cheddira penalty on the stroke of half-time, Luca Mazzitelli's brace and a stoppage-time finish from Pol Lirola.

Atalanta are two points back in ninth after their second defeat in their opening four matches, which means that Lecce stay in the Champions League positions despite only drawing 1-1 at Monza.

France managed to overcome mistakes and imperfections in their World Cup final victory over Croatia with sheer mental strength to lift the trophy for the second time, coach Didier Deschamps said on Sunday.

France overpowered Croatia 4-2 to lift the trophy and Deschamps became only the third man, after Brazil's Mario Zagallo and German Franz Beckenbauer to win it both as player and coach.

But they were made to sweat for about an hour and needed an own goal and a penalty to take the lead.

"My greatest source of pride is they had the right state of mind," Deschamps, who had captained France to the 1998 title, told reporters.

"Today there were imperfections, we did not do everything right but we had those mental and psychological qualities which were decisive for this World Cup."

France took the lead from a Mario Mandzukic own goal and they had to soak up a sustained Croatian offensive, including a 28th-minute equaliser, before going in front with a penalty.

They then struck twice midway through the second half to put the game beyond the Croats.

Deschamps said 14 of his players were World Cup newcomers but were ready to work towards a common goal and were mentally more mature than their age.

"Talent is not sufficient. You need the psychological and mental aspects. Any team is then able to climb mountains," Deschamps said.

"Sometimes I can be hard very hard with them but I do it for them and even though they are young they usually do listen."

Among the newcomers are Kylian Mbappe who was voted young player of the tournament and scored France's fourth goal.

"The collective is always important but there are individual players who have made the difference," he said, naming Mbappe and man-of-the-match Antoine Griezmann.

"Those 23 players will now be linked forever whatever happens. They will go different paths but will forever be linked together and from today nothing will be the same professionally because they are world champions.

"We will realise what has happened tomorrow," he said after his players stormed the news conference twice to douse him with champagne. "At the moment they do not know what it is to be world champions."

The 49-year-old coach, who also led France to the Euro 2016 final only to lose in Paris to Portugal, said that defeat may have been key to winning the World Cup.

"Maybe if we were Euro champions we would not have been world champions today. I learned a lot from that defeat," he said.

"The Euro final was different. We tried to stay relaxed this time and the players knew what they had to do and what was at stake."

Up to 31 athletes from 12 countries could be banned from the Rio Olympics for doping after new tests on samples from the 2008 Beijing Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said Tuesday.

The 31 were caught in new tests on 454 Beijing samples using "the very latest scientific analysis methods," the International Olympic Committee said.

The re-examination was part of widespread measures taken by sporting bodies after a wave of new doping scandals to hit international sport with Russia at the centre.

Results from 250 retests on samples taken at the 2012 London Games are due "shortly" and mean the failures could increase.

The IOC has also ordered that samples from the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics be retested following allegations that the Russian city's anti-doping laboratory was "subverted" to help Russian athletes.

"All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win," IOC president Thomas Bach said.

"They show once again that dopers have no place to hide."

The suspect athletes from the Beijing Games took part in six sports, but none were named by the IOC which issued a statement after an executive board meeting in Lausanne.

The board "agreed unanimously to initiate proceedings immediately," said the statement and the 12 national Olympic committees involved would be informed within days.

"All those athletes infringing anti-doping rules will be banned from competing at the Olympic Games Rio 2016," the IOC declared.

The results of new examinations on 250 samples taken at the London Games are due "shortly" and mean the total failures could increase.

More than 5,000 tests were carried out in London, according to IOC figures.

About 4,000 tests were carried out in Beijing. Just after the Games, the IOC re-examined nearly 1,000 with a new test for the blood-boosting drug CERA. The 1500m men's champion Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain was among five athletes caught.

The IOC also warned that it will start "a wider re-testing programme of medalists from Beijing and London. The samples of athletes who could be awarded medals following the disqualification of others will also be retested."

Reacting in a statement on Twitter, European Athletics chief Svein Arne Hansen said "it is never too late to correct the mistakes of the past and to ensure clean athletes are rightfully rewarded."

The IOC board demanded that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) start "a fully fledged investigation" into allegations that testing at the Sochi laboratory was subverted by Russia's secret services and sports ministry.

Russian authorities have strongly denied any wrongdoing, but IOC president Thomas Bach called the allegations against the Sochi laboratory "worrying".

The IOC said Sochi samples will be re-examined at the Lausanne anti-doping laboratory, where they are stored for 10 years.

"We keep samples for 10 years so that the cheats know that they can never rest," said IOC president Thomas Bach.

Bach called the new measures "another major step to protect the clean athletes irrespective of any sport or any nation."

The IOC said it would take "swift action" following the result of WADA's investigation into the allegations against the Sochi laboratory.

Russia is already battling to get its track and field athletes back into the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) so that they can take part in the Rio de Janeiro Games.

The IAAF suspended Russia over what WADA called a "state-sponsored" doping regime. It is to decide on Russia's case on June 11.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko apologised for the athletes actions in a commentary published on Sunday. "Let us be clear. We are ashamed of them," he said.

But Mutko, the Kremlin and other officials have strongly objected to the latest accusations over the Sochi laboratory.

A New York Times report based on information from the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, claimed that dozens of athletes including 15 medallists were involved in the Sochi subterfuge.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the allegations "the slander of a defector". Rodchenkov is currently in hiding in the United States.

Can Croatia cross one final hurdle come Sunday night and become the ninth nation to win the World Cup? Standing in their way are France, whose sole ambition will be to claim that coveted piece of glory for the second time at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium.

As an independent nation, Croatia might not have a rich history as far as their participation in the biggest show on Earth is concerned but since their World Cup debut in 1998, eight years after being liberated from Yugoslavia, it has been a spectacular journey for them.

Coincidentally, it was also the year that France became the seventh nation to win the World Cup, which was on their home soil, by defeating Brazil 3-0 in the final.

More interestingly, it was France who shattered Croatia's dreams by defeating their first 'golden generation' in the semifinal of that tournament 2-1, thanks to two quick blows from Les Bleus defender Lilian Thuram after Croatia's Davor Suker had scored in the 46th minute.

Even in that defeat, Croatia became only the second team after Portugal to have the best finish as debutants. They were placed third following a 2-1 win over Holland in the position deciding game, where Suker scored his sixth goal to win the Golden Boot.

If that was a big statement by an up and coming footballing nation, then the exploits of their next generation, now marshalled by Luka Modric, is no less spectacular as they have reached the finals despite a below-par qualifying campaign.

Croatia launched their campaign in Russia with a 2-0 win against Nigeria before pulling off a magnificent 3-0 win against two-time winners Argentina. They beat Iceland in the last group league game to move into the round of 16 with the maximum number of points.

And in the last three knockout games, where they had to battle it out beyond regulation time, Croatia showed tenacity and the will to fight till the end.

Croatia's round of 16 game against Denmark was a classic example of their never-say-die attitude. After conceding an early goal, they equalised and took the game to extra time, where Modric missed a penalty. However, the Real Madrid midfielder showed courage and stepped up in the shootout to convert his spot kick.

In the quarterfinal against hosts Russia, which they won in the shootout after a 2-2 draw, they faced a similar scenario. This was also the case in the semifinal against England before Mario Mandzukic hit the winner in the 109th minute.

The Juventus forward might not be as prolific as Suker was on the big stage but he has the knack of scoring goals from out of nowhere. Croatia actually have individual winners in Modric, Ivan Rakitic, Ante Rebic and Ivan Perisic, the Inter Milan forward who has been in fine form.

Croatia's last three games might have started slowly but gradually picked up with the progression of the game, which is a hallmark of a good team.

They also showed how athletically fit they are as they had to play for 120 minutes in all three previous games.

Against England at Saint Petersburg, many thought it would be impossible for them to survive if the game went beyond regulation time. Surprisingly though, it was England who slowed down as the game progressed. In addition, when the Turkish referee blew the final whistle, Croatia were heading for another crack at the goal.

France midfielder Paul Pogba previously said that he wants to earn his own star on the shirt on Sunday. However, the world will not be surprised to a see the birth of a new star.