The Warm-Up: It’s Sanchez v Ronaldo; Gylfi pleasures don’t come cheap

With the greatest permitted respect to your New Zealands, your Australias and the puzzlingly, perennially bland spectacle of Russia, the Confederations Cup is now chaff-free and 100% wheat, all-man and zero-boy.

The semi-final line-up has adhered to the emphatic gulf between the two levels between the eight competing nations: Germany, Portugal, Chile and Mexico’s combined FIFA ranking is still nowhere near that of 48th-placed Australia, who briefly threatened to sneak into the knockout stage until Alexis Sanchez and co held them off.

We’re left with a couple of novel match-ups for the latter stage of a “major” tournament. Germany should have enough to get past Mexico – who have at least provided most of the entertainment in Russia so far – but Portugal v Chile will meet for just the third time in their history. Whatever the importance of the Confederations Cup, the chance to enjoy such underplayed rivalries between such light-heavyweight nations should be enjoyed while they can. As June starts thinking about becoming July, it may all come down to whether Alexis Sanchez or Cristiano Ronaldo has more left in their respective tank.

The damning McLaren report, published towards the end of last year, implicated at least 30 Olympic sports in its allegations of Russian state-sponsored doping. Given that a country of 144 million people, and next year’s World Cup hosts, still can’t unearth a single footballer of elite quality, the ol’ Beautiful Game was always likely to get its turn under the investigative spotlight.

And so it is. The Mail on Sunday has revealed that Russia’s entire 23-man squad for the 2014 World Cup is being investigated for possible doping offences.

The Russians are proving as receptive as ever. “There have never been and will never be any problems with doping in our football,” stonewalled deputy prime minister Vitaly Mutko, also chairman of the 2018 World Cup committee. “They have written some sort of nonsense.”

This was already a tricky case for FIFA to pursue, even without Gianni Infantino sharing a few chuckles with Vladimir Putin at the Confederations Cup. In a wider context, there must be some at football’s governing body for whom these next two toxic World Cups can’t come and go quick enough. From a purely footballing perspective, there will surely never be a more comatose, more gargantuan sleeping giant than Russia, no matter what they try.

In a few ways, Gylfi Sigurdsson to Everton is about as tidy-looking a transfer as you’ll get. He’s the Premier League’s ultimate best-of-the-rest figure: well capable of performing at a higher level than Swansea operate, but still a player for whom the established top six would be hard-pushed to find a regular use.

For those knocking at that top-of-the-table door, then (and that’s Everton) Sigurdsson represents a sure thing. Swansea are well aware of that, of course, and so Ronald Koeman will have to loosen his purse strings even more.

Value is a particularly hard thing to nail down – this summer more than ever, perhaps – so the Icelander’s price tag remains unclear. Everton’s latest bid – of somewhere between £27-30m, depending whose report you read – has been rejected by the Swans. It still looks a very agreeable move on paper, but money isn’t printed on pap….hang on, that doesn’t work.

Right, this is going straight in to your actual dad’s top three least favourite goals of all time: it’s Paul Pogba, in a charity match hosted with former Juventus team-mate Juan Cuadrado, dabbing the ball home from a yard out.

Infuriatingly for some who engaged in barrel-scraping schadenfreude over his world-record transfer fee in 2016/17, Pogba is going to be absolutely, untouchably brilliant this season.

Yes, it was a quiet weekend. But it was one in which an indisputable national legend reached the ultimate landmark: Australia’s tireless Tim Cahill – 38 in December – now has a century of caps for the Socceroos.

He couldn’t quite mark the occasion with a goal – a trademark, prodigious leap between defenders to head home, or otherwise – but he did sneak in a yellow card for an overzealous tackle. Samoa’s loss has undoubtedly been Australia’s gain.

Nope, still not interested.

Former Manchester City youngster Laurie Bell now plies his trade in the Swedish fourth tier and, for the Guardian, he has a curious tale to tell of how a regional cup competition gives its minnows a fighting chance. Could it catch on over here? The purists would need some persuading…

Today, England’s most excruciating defeat to Germany becomes old enough to drink in the USA. Just think, we were about three millimetres away from this parallel universe:

A quiet footballing Monday in store, if we’re honest, save for the Holidays You’ll Never Be Able to Afford Clasico that is Madagascar vs Seychelles. Can the Pirates come away with the bounty of an international friendly win against Auguste Raux’s men? You’ll find out right here – well, somewhere.