France uncorked a Champagne performance on Tuesday to sweep Sweden aside 3-0 with a display of attacking verve and precision and book their place in the World Cup last 16.
The scoreline flattered Sweden. France’s flamboyant attack might have reached double figures were it not for the woodwork and a series of near-misses measured in millimetres.
Paraguay lie in wait, and the exhilarating football France produced here will do little to help the South Americans sleep before their last-16 meeting.
At the heart of it all was French captain and talisman Kylian Mbappe. From the start it had been clear he was a man on a mission.
Mbappe’s two goals lifted his World Cup finals tally to 18, one behind Lionel Messi on the all-time list. Remarkably, those goals have come in just 18 matches, with his double here taking him to six for the tournament.
By the final whistle Sweden looked less like beaten men, more like beaten-up men, after 90 minutes hauling themselves round the New York-New Jersey pitch trying to keep up with the precise French passing.
Mbappe was at the centre of everything. He had a long-range shot saved in the 16th minute and had the ball in the net four minutes later. The effort was ruled out for offside, but Sweden had been warned.
Mbappe rattled the post just after the half-hour as he inched ever closer and finally broke the deadlock on 45 minutes when, from a pass by Ousmane Dembele, he jinked and skipped and slammed a right-foot shot past Jacob Widell Zetterstrom.
The pair have now combined for six goals at World Cup finals, more than any duo in tournament history, moving clear of Germany’s Michael Ballack and Miroslav Klose, and Poland’s Grzegorz Lato and Andrzej Szarmach.
After squandering a handful of gilt-edged chances by the finest of margins France finally recalibrated their slide-rule precision in the 53rd minute, when Bradley Barcola lofted the ball past the Swedish goalkeeper to double their lead.
Twenty minutes later Mbappe had his second, clipping the ball past the keeper from a deft through-ball from Michael Olise.
In the 84th minute, Deschamps brought Mbappe off and the captain left to rousing cheers from the crowd after a masterclass that hammered out France’s intentions. – Reuters
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