France and England played the penultimate match of the World Cup on Saturday afternoon, and so once again we are faced with the existential question: 

Whither the consolation game? 

We’ll start there. Officially this is called the “Third-Place Match,” and it may not sound like much, but for years in other sports it was called by its more colloquial name: the consolation game. This was always a little bit funny, because there’s really nothing at all consoling about these games. The old saying goes that second place is just the “first loser,” so what does that make third place? 

For years there have been different takes on either side of the aisle on this one.