2.27pm BST

Preamble They say that familiarity breeds familiarity, and these two teams are familiar with one another, so accordingly, familiarity is present. They last met just three weeks ago, in the group stages of this competition, a game for which Norway, already through to the quarter-finals, made six changes to their starting XI - and still won.

Incredibly, the defeat was Germany's first in the competition for 20 years - incredibly, they've won the last five - and are hot favourites to add a sixth this afternoon. Norway, on the other hand, are just chuffed to be there - even their coach, Even Pellerud, admitted that he didn't expect the team to do so well.

But, of course, this could just be a version of the MIND GAMES that are so inconceivably mindy and gamish. Mind games. Mind games. Mind games. It's just aggravating that all this ball kicking gets in the way.