What the Paris attacks mean for Manchester United's players' international fixtures

This isn't really the forum for any detailed consideration of the terror attacks that killed 129 people in Paris on Friday, but one of the more minor consequences has been a certain amount of change in Europe's international football programme. As such, for anybody wondering what's happening with the various internationals involving Manchester United players due to be played over the next few days, here's the information as we understand it. We'll update this post if anything changes.

The most significant news is that England's game against France will go ahead. Morgan Schneiderlin and Anthony Martial may play on the visiting side, while Wayne Rooney, Phil Jones and Chris Smalling will likely play some part for the hosts. Jesse Lingard could make his debut at some point, but Michael Carrick will not feature, having injured himself against Spain. France's Lassana Diarra remains with the squad despite his cousin being numbered among the dead; this, over in the Independent, is worth reading.

Given what happened in Paris, there will be various tweaks to the usual protocols. There'll be a minute's silence, of course, and the national anthems will be sung in reverse order, La Marseillaise following God Save the Queen. The lyrics to the French anthem have been printed on the backs of various newspapers and will be displayed on the screens at Wembley. That sound you can hear is 90,000 England fans dusting down their O-levels and trying to remember what an acute accent does to an 'e'.

Rooney, by the by, has been talking to the press, stating that the decision to play the game shows that "the world will go on and stand against terror". Always feel a bit for national team captains in circumstances like this: whatever Roy Hodgson's reasons for giving Rooney the armband, it presumably wasn't for eloquence in the face of tragedy, yet all of a sudden he's up there in front of the press, surrounded by greedy microphones, needing to find the right words. Or at least, avoid the wrong ones. Which he seems to have managed to do.

His counterpart Hugo Lloris, meanwhile, has described the game as "a great moment of solidarity," while acknowledging that some within the French squad were initially reluctant to play.

Elsewhere on the continent, Spain's game against Belgium has been called off, after the Belgian government raised the national terror threat level. The Belgian FA have apologised to everybody that was hoping to see Juan Mata and David de Gea.

Finally, for anybody planning to watch Germany's friendly against the Netherlands, Bastian Schweinsteiger will not be playing. Germany's captain, who was on the field when the attacks took place outside the Stade de France, who spent the night in the stadium with the rest of his squad, and who said that he had been left "speechless" by the incident, is one of six players to have left the national team early.

Update: the Germany-Netherlands game has been cancelled following the security alert at the stadium.