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PHILADELPHIA — France wanted to make sure that the rest of the field in the World Cup knew that it could find plenty of ways to win.
Kylian Mbappé made sure to get that message across after France’s 1-0 win over Paraguay in front of a sellout crowd of 68,324, who braved the extreme heat here Saturday.
Far from the flashy wins that France has produced this World Cup, it got down and dirty in a physical matchup with Paraguay that ended with a brief skirmish between the French star and Paraguay goalkeeper Orlando Gill.
“If we have to get our hands dirty, we’ll do it,” Mbappé told broadcasters after the match. “They thought we’d just turn up in tuxedos, make a few flashy moves and play a few passes. We know how to play rough football too. And that’s exactly what we did today — we won. We were even better than them at that.”
Mbappé found himself involved in several tense moments, from a rough tackle late in the first half to a moment with Gill that resulted in the Paraguayan throwing the ball at him.
In the end, Mbappé had the last laugh as the victor, scoring the go-ahead goal on a penalty kick in the 70th minute, which was awarded after the video assistant referee ruled that a tackle by Paraguayan defender Gustavo Gómez was a foul.
The scrappy victory sends France to the quarterfinals and a date with Morocco on Thursday in Boston.
The French soccer star tied Lionel Messi with seven goals in this year’s tournament and scored his 19th career goal in his 19th career World Cup match after making his debut for Les Bleus during the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Mbappé is one goal behind Messi for the all-time World Cup goal-scoring record.
Mbappé and France were not short on chances, but to Paraguay’s credit, its physical style of play helped temper the machine-like offense that Les Bleus have shown this tournament.
And the physicality that Paraguay brought forced French manager Didier Deschamps to calm his squad down.
“Well, we were in the lead and if we play into their hands we can’t get out of this,” Deschamps said he told his players to settle them.
But the French manager also viewed the dogfight as a positive for his team, which he said was “having it easy” thus far through the tournament.
“I prepared the players, thankfully,” he said. “I’m not going to criticize Paraguay. Each team plays however it wants. … It was an intense, aggressive match with a lot of downtime, but the players were prepared for that.”
France had scored at least three goals in its past five World Cup matches, which included the 2022 final against Argentina, coming into Saturday night, only to see that streak come to an end thanks to one of the Cinderella stories of this year’s tournament.
The physicality picked up as the match went on, and in the 35th minute, it looked as though the two sides might come to blows after Mbappé took exception to an aggressive defensive play by Andrés Cubas.
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Mbappé and Cubas exchanged words, leading to both teams charging in to defend their respective players, with several players exchanging shoves.
France really started to show its offensive prowess in the second half and nearly claimed the lead several minutes after halftime.
Mbappé was able to break free but couldn’t corral the ball enough, allowing a Paraguayan defender to catch up to him.
Several minutes later, Manu Koné fired a ball from deep outside the penalty area and forced Gill to make a diving save.
The aggressive nature of the match had William Saliba believing that the refs could have handed out a few more yellow cards.
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“It might have calmed them down a bit,” he said. “It’s clear that sometimes we can get too angry too. We weren’t going to let that happen. We stayed focused and we finished with 11 men. … These are sometimes battles. The match called for it and that’s it. We fought a battle.”
The sweltering heat was hard to ignore Saturday, as temperatures hovered around 100 degrees near the start of the match and only dipped slightly as the evening went on.
FIFA honored the 250th anniversary of America with a prematch ceremony that included a military flyover and special performances before the match by the Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale, as well as by the Roots and the national anthem by Idina Menzel.
Source: New York Post
