Latest Sports Stories

Football News

Where to start with this rollercoaster of a match? Thomas Tuchel had promised a reaction but he could not have imagined the manner of the response from England, albeit against a France team firmly on their sunloungers during an incredible first half in which they conceded four times.Yet with Kylian Mbappé on the hunt for his second successive Golden Boot in Didier Deschamps’ last match in charge of Les Bleus, even that lead courtesy of goals from Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka almost wasn’t enough. Mbappé began the comeback straight after half-time before adding his second after Bradley Barcola’s strike. The 27-year-old has become the first male player to reach double figures at a World Cup since Gerd Müller in 1970. Over to you, Lionel.Thankfully for England, Saka’s late penalty to complete his hat-trick and Jude Bellingham’s seventh of the tournament after he came off the bench ensured that an afternoon that had begun with boos for Tuchel from some supporters ended with England claiming third place at the World Cup for the first time. Although the scars of their semi-final loss to Argentina will remain, they at least rounded off their campaign with a memorable victory.Miami’s leaden skies throughout the day had matched the mood of both teams as they tried to put on a brave face after semi-final exits. As well as his attempt to overhaul Lionel Messi, Mbappé had extra motivation along with his teammates to send Deschamps off into the sunset with a victory after 14 years at the helm. The Real Madrid star published a message on social media in the hours before kick-off thanking the man who guided France to a second world title in 2018 and came so close four years later. “Today is your last dance,” he wrote.Tuchel signed a contract extension before this tournament and has indicated he wants to lead England into Euro 2028 on home soil. However after a tetchy pre-match press conference here on Friday night when the German doubled down on the conviction that he would make the same decisions again given the chance against Argentina, the next two years look set to be a test of his ability to rebuild his reputation among England’s supporters. The reception Harry Kane and the rest were given after England received their bronze medals suggested the players’ effort over the past five weeks has been fully appreciated.Like Deschamps, Tuchel made seven changes from the semi-final, with Rice surprisingly named captain in place of Kane despite carrying an injury for the entire tournament. Arsenal, who have serious concerns about how long William Saliba is likely to be sidelined with a back injury, will not have been delighted to find Saka starting either.There was also intrigue in the absence from the bench of Kobbie Mainoo, the Manchester United midfielder who has not played a minute at the World Cup. The Football Association said he was injured, although Jordan Henderson was listed among the substitutes despite the broken arm sustained celebrating England’s win over Mexico.At first, France seemed to be suffering from more of a hangover. Désiré Doué’s loose pass in the third minute was seized upon by Rice and his finish left Mike Maignan with no chance. Mbappé managed to tread on the ball just as he was speeding through on goal before Saka had a goal from an exquisite Morgan Rogers pass chalked off for offside. It needed a block from Maxence Lacroix to halt Saka’s next attack before Konsa beat his marker, Adrien Rabiot, to nod in Rice’s corner. England looked as if they had a point to prove.Marcus Rashford embarrassed Warren Zaïre-Emery with a nutmeg before unleashing a powerful shot that was well saved by Maignan. At the other end, Dean Henderson brilliantly denied Mbappé, who had cut in from the left, before another save ended up kickstarting the move for England’s third on the break. There was something comical about the way Rashford and Saka took turns trying to score before the latter eventually did. A brilliant pass from Eberechi Eze set up Saka’s second on the stroke of half-time. France’s players looked stunned, even if Mbappé tried his best to laugh it off.Deschamps responded by making four changes at the break, including Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola. They had pulled one back within three minutes when Mbappé finished Olise’s through ball after the England substitute Ollie Watkins lost possession. It was not long before Barcola was sprinting back to halfway with the ball tucked under an arm after making it 4-2. Mbappé added his second after exchanging passes with Olise on the edge of England’s area and suddenly Tuchel’s side were really wobbling.Somehow Olise could not hit the target to force extra time after toying with England’s defence. Bellingham and Elliot Anderson had been summoned from the bench by that stage and it was left to the former and Saka, who did not get off the bench against Argentina, to hammer the final nails into France’s coffin. Between times Dembélé pulled another goal back in this incredible spectacle that will surely go down as the game of the tournament.

Football News

Lee Matthews gets in touch: “On TT, I don’t think we all want to play the ‘blame game’ as he says. I think we just want to understand what happened. I think we could move on if he could help us understand what it was like to make that decision under the stressful conditions he and his team were experiencing.“Sat at home, we can say what we’d do without having to face the consequences. If he could open up and talk us through it, we could understand. More than any other tournament exit, I’m frustrated - my first WC was 1986. If he keeps saying he has ‘no regrets’ and these keep being the headlines, he’ll lose everyone’s support for good. Going for it tonight could help. Win or lose, if he goes for it, he can show what a post-WC TT England team will look like. Open up and talk to us TT and please go for it tonight… Fingers crossed….”

Football News

Saturday’s rebranded “bronze final” between France and England in Miami might feel like a modern, Gianni-coded exercise in squeezing the product dry, but the third-place playoff is a staple of World Cup history, even if it remains the game nobody wants to play in. The very first TPPO came in 1934, Germany defeating Austria 3-2 in a match engulfed in murky, menacing geopolitics. Thankfully, the fixture quickly became a more knockabout affair – Brazil swaggered on to the world stage by beating Sweden 4-2 in 1938, and France put six past West Germany in a nine-goal feast of football 20 years later. Just Fontaine scored four that day, later to be joined by Thomas Müller, Davor Suker and Toto Schillaci in using the fixture to pad their Golden Boot stats – a tactic Kylian Mbappé might want to try against a punch-drunk England side and pip Lionel Messi to another personal accolade as a result.Yes, the third-place playoff can have a hungover, world-weary vibe, but it can also be a lot of fun. The goals-per-game average is higher than in the final, and the TPPO has never gone to penalties. But does the result matter? It depends who you ask. Back in 1982, France lost an all-time classic semi-final on penalties to West Germany, and were extremely laissez-faire against Poland just two days later. “Our hearts were elsewhere,” Alain Giresse recalled 40 years on. “We had pulled the plug.” On the other hand, Poland’s 3-2 victory meant they matched their best-ever performance, having also won the TPPO against Brazil in 1970. Plenty of other teams have secured a new personal best via this fixture, including Austria, Chile, Portugal, Turkey and Belgium, whose 2-0 triumph over a checked-out England sealed third place in 2018, and a rousing civic reception when the squad returned home.Even if no player or team truly enjoys this game, England still like it less than most. Their two previous appearances have ended in defeat – against Italy in 1990, and the aforementioned Belgium clash in 2018. Not even Carlo Ancelotti would raise an eyebrow if England come up short again on Saturday, against an all-star France attack eager to take out their frustration on anyone in their path. But if England can be a little more Azteca, a little less Atlanta, then their best men’s World Cup performance since 1966 is in reach. So dig Kobbie Mainoo out of storage, fire up Wonderwall and get in the mood. What do you reckon, Thomas Tuchel? “None of our players and none of the French players want to play this match.” Ah. Still, would victory at least earn Tuchel some breathing room, a shiny bronze medal to point at as hacks keep banging on about the Argentina game? The short, and indeed long answer is no. But there are just two bites left at this summer-long buffet of football, so we’re going to watch it anyway.Join John Brewin from 10pm BST (5pm EST) for hot minute-by-minute updates from France 3-1 England in the TPPO.Want a pick of Big Website’s best sportswriting and highlights in the past seven days? Well, subscribe to the Recap and you’ll get it on Sunday.“None of us ‌wanted to play for ​this third place but ​we have no choice. We want to pay back our coach. He did so much for the France team. We must be grateful to him for that and we need to do everything we can to win this game … to get this chocolate medal, this bronze medal” – Ibrahima Konaté has got Football Daily hungry before Didier Deschamps’ final game with France.double quotation markI seem to recall that the GWC has been hosted by three countries, who advanced to the same stage of the competition, making them at least equal as far as ability to compete is concerned. So, surely, any presentations at the final should be represented and handed over by Canada, Mexico and USA USA USA, on behalf of Fifa, and not only by Donald Trump?” – Dave Butler.double quotation markSo Donald Trump will be attending the GWC final … what further imaginary award will Infantino pull out of the hat for him at the end? The Ballon d’Orange perhaps?” – Phil Tavernerdouble quotation markRe: naming the 2030 World Cup (Football Daily letters passim): split across three global power zones, it sounds like an Aldous Huxley dystopian vision. How about Brave New World Cup?” – Daniel SolomonsIf you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day goes to … Dave Butler. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Football News

France’s captain has played with a sense of unfinished business but he will be 31 when the next World Cup beginsIt was only last month that Kylian Mbappé suggested all roads may lead to Florida. He was in sufficiently mischievous mood to reveal David Beckham had been chewing his ear off about a move to Major League Soccer, dangling the prospect of a reunion with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami.“We will see, I don’t know,” he said. “The American culture is different. There are no limits to ambitions, I like it.”Yet Mbappé will walk out in Miami on Saturday nursing clipped wings and thwarted aspirations. The third-place playoff retains some prestige given the names involved. But it pales in comparison with the broken dream of another final; the regrets from France’s semi-final defeat by Spain, their third in three years against the European champions, will linger into the American summer.France’s no-show on Tuesday makes the sands of time run a little faster for Mbappé. It feels a cruel trick that he will be 31 when the next World Cup comes around. At his current rate, he will have made about 700 appearances by then and there are no guarantees a body of work defined by explosive power can hold up into his fourth decade. Mbappé has nothing to prove, but this tournament had seemed a natural stage for a mid-career rubber stamping of his legacy.That may still come around in diluted form. No player has won two consecutive Golden Boots and, even when looking to the sky upon the final whistle and mopping his head with his shirt, Mbappé stood top of that ranking by virtue of having more assists than Messi. The pair were tied on eight goals.It is not quite enough for him. His frustration was made clear in a dissection that, interpreted one way, could be regarded as a rebuke to Didier Deschamps for tactical failures.France were outnumbered in midfield, Dani Olmo able to provide balance in a way Michael Olise could not, and Mbappé was seen only fleetingly before taking a number of pot shots in the later stages. They could not get the ball to him before that; ultimately any collective idea was sacrificed to the flailing hope that individual genius would, as so many times before, hold sway.The angst is greater because Mbappé had hit the ground running, shaking off an anticlimactic end to the season with Real Madrid and battering through the early challenges in France’s path. The sense of unfinished business was laid bare.“I would change Argentina 2022,” he has said when asked, if permitted, how he would rewrite the past. “That final comes to mind more than the one we won.”The hat-trick in Lusail and subsequent defeat on penalties are a sore that refuses to heal. Facing Messi and Argentina one last time in New Jersey could have been the palimpsest for a fresh version of the story and a coronation as the world’s undisputed best.Instead, a less glittering volume must begin. “We have to move on to the next chapter,” Mbappé said. “Because football waits for no one. We have to start over, put this failure behind us, and learn from it.”There is no suggestion he will call time prematurely on commitments with France. Zinedine Zidane will almost certainly succeed Deschamps and the tantalising question is whether Les Bleus’ two best players of all time can forge a partnership that works.Even if it passes the vibe check, Zidane has been out of the fray for five years since leaving Real. He and his captain must find a way to harness those moments of star quality while honing the kind of coherent method that has ultimately allowed Spain to outstrip France convincingly.What version of Mbappé will France find in 2030? It may depend on whether he has finally won a Champions League, with or without a European Championship title in two years’ time. It would have seemed unthinkable, when he tore a trail through Russia 2018, that a dozen years might pass without Mbappé claiming another of football’s majors.The opportunities will keep coming, but that prospect is, if nothing else, becoming a talking point. Mbappé would be repulsed by the very notion of long-term association with near misses.Maybe Beckham and Inter Miami will indeed tempt Mbappé one day, just as Messi was lured to a late-career role that has done no harm to his longevity for Argentina. Perhaps it would mean the World Cup tilts keep coming.In theory, Mbappé could carry France’s hopes to Saudi Arabia 2034 and even beyond. But it did not take a huge leap, on watching his features contort with multiple agonies at Dallas Stadium, to wonder whether his clearest shot at satisfying those big ambitions has drifted away.

Football News

Kylian Mbappé, Michael Olise and Ousmane Dembélé blew teams away in the early rounds of the World Cup but France had no answers when faced with Spain’s tactical superiorityFor the last few weeks, France had seemed destined to reach their third straight World Cup final, but in the end they were overrun by a more tactically coherent Spain team in the semi-finals. Once France went behind to Mikel Oyarzabal’s penalty in the 22nd minute – the first time they had trailed in the tournament – Didier Deschamps’ side never looked like mounting a comeback. There would be no bolt from the blue from Kylian Mbappé, with the match instead plodding along to its logical conclusion. Where did it go wrong and what will come next?France’s all-star attack had been praised across the globe for the last six weeks. Having scored 13 goals in their first four matches, their frontline looked unstoppable. Against Spain, though, the forwards did not combine meaningfully with one another and their lack of clinical edge was laid bare.France were 2-0 down before they had a shot on target. Mbappé, the second top scorer in men’s World Cup history, failed to have a shot on target. As had been the case in the last two matches, Mbappé’s attacking impact was blunted by the need to drop deeper into midfield, and his first shot did not arrive until midway through the second half.Michael Olise, who was compared to Michel Platini for his playmaking performances in the group stage, lost the ball 20 times and struggled to find his bearings. Ousmane Dembélé did not trouble Unai Simón until the final minutes of the match. Of the starting quartet, the most significant impact on the match came from Bradley Barcola in his defensive contributions, with Lucas Digne unable to contain Lamine Yamal.France’s forwards, who had looked so at ease swapping positions and combining in the early stages of the competition, appeared increasingly isolated from each other as the knockout stages progressed. In locking down the middle third of the pitch, Spain succeeded in keeping the forwards distant from each other and cut off from the rest of the team.Adrien Rabiot was the only France player who repeatedly broke down the Spanish lines, but he was hamstrung by the yellow card he picked up in the 10th minute. Deschamps’ decision to take him off at half-time drastically decreased France’s chances of winning the midfield battle. Alongside the recently injured Aurélien Tchouaméni, who often found himself playing too far back to have any influence on the match, Manu Koné was unable to replicate his standout performance against Morocco.Deschamps made a some like-for-like switches but they had no impact on the momentum of the game. Desiré Doué and Rayan Cherki were confined to isolated pockets of space, and Théo Hernandez did not fare any better than Digne against Spanish attacks down the right wing.It would be difficult to argue France underestimated their opponents; Deschamps repeatedly singled out Spain as the favourites to win the tournament. Whether this was a sincere assessment or an attempt to reduce the pressure on his own team, his observation was backed up by recent experience.Counting the last Olympic final, France have now lost four consecutive matches to Spain, all in semi-finals or finals. Spain’s midfield supremacy ultimately made the difference in all of those matches. For the second time in three years, France were overrun by a midfield consisting of Rodri, Fabián Ruiz and Dani Olmo.Spain’s midfield superiority extends beyond matches between the senior sides. Whatever the lineup, whatever the age group, Spain have a clearly defined style that is replicated across all of their teams as part of an all-encompassing strategy. The same cannot be said of France’s various teams, which often seem to be built on a case-by-case basis in response to the individual talent available. Up against a deeply ingrained tactical setup, those individuals have been thwarted at every turn.Deschamps will end his 14-year tenure after Saturday’s third-place playoff in Miami. Finishing on the podium at three World Cups would not make for bad reading, and would surely place Deschamps as France’s best-ever head coach, but the lasting verdict will be that he could have achieved more given the talent at his disposal.The freedom Deschamps afforded his forwards in this tournament could also have been seen as a transition towards the Zinedine Zidane era. Zidane was famously non-interventionist when it came to coaching his front three at Real Madrid, and the depth of talent in the France squad will allow for a similar approach.In any case, Zidane’s appointment is likely to bring a degree of continuity to the national team. Like Deschamps, Zidane is above all a pragmatist on the sidelines. He is also an icon who commands respect in the dressing room – even more so than Deschamps. There are reasons to be optimistic. He will have a relatively young squad and will have goodwill from fans, players and decision-makers.The 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns were ultimately the culmination of Deschamps’ tactics of control and pragmatism, which took several tournaments to perfect before they became a winning formula. That approach had evidently run its course by Euro 2024 and he was right to switch things up. It was perhaps overly ambitious, though, to expect such a radical change to click straight away. France breezed into the latter stages, but they failed against Spain.This new-look France team may realise its full potential in four years’ time under Zidane. If that is the case, Deschamps’ legacy will be winning a World Cup and also laying the foundations for the new era.This is an article by Get French Football News

Football News

L’Équipe laments ‘mentally sunk’ players iin DallasOuest France front page reads: ‘End of American dream’French fans’ expectations of their national team had been at an all-time high: a semi-final on Bastille Day, Kylian Mbappé a hero, a squad unbeaten. Across the country, bars had been packed with viewers spilling on to pavements, ready to crack open the fireworks ahead of hopes for the final.But the night was unexpectedly subdued, streets cleared early. On Wednesday morning, the French media were still digesting the disappointment of defeat in a World Cup semi-final, praising Spain’s performance in Texas while struggling to comprehend Les Bleus’ fall from a high.“Demolished” headlined the print edition of the French sports paper L’Équipe on its match report. France’s World Cup adventure “deserved more than this disaster of a game, this disaster of strategy and emotions”, wrote Vincent Duluc. He said France could not even complain about losing because of the “feeling of barely really having played, and of betraying the magic of this American dream”.Duluc felt the team had been physically not up to it, that there were technical mistakes and, above all, the players had appeared “mentally sunk by the emotional dimension of the match”.After the French team had been placed on the highest pedestal for weeks by fans back home, Le Monde’s correspondent Alexandre Lemarié was saddened. “The fall to earth is as brutal as it is painful,” the paper wrote. It was a “cruel disappointment”, particularly given the team’s performance up to now: “A collective failure.”This semi-final would be hard to forget for all the wrong reasons, wrote the correspondent for the regional northern paper, La Voix du Nord, saying it would “remain a nightmare”. Ouest France headlined its front page with “The end of the American dream” over a picture of Mbappé with his head in his hand. “They fell from very, very high,” was written in Libération.In Le Figaro, Baptiste Desprez was disheartened but recognised Spain’s skill. “Les Bleus, stifled, pummelled and incapable of three passes despite their promise from the start of the competition, faced players stronger than them,” he wrote. “It’s sad. Infuriating. But that’s sport. The strongest won.”

Football News

Brilliant buildup play has often withered but control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaosWhen the World Cup came to North America, with its final held in the planet’s biggest media market, the tournament was bound to fixate on stars.Fox’s coverage certainly enables that bias. Every game is billed like a boxing bout between two über-talented footballers rather than 22 players figuring things out across 90 minutes. One semi-final has been distilled down to MESSI v KANE (or MESSI v BELLINGHAM, depending on the broadcaster). The other leaned heavily on hope that Lamine Yamal’s hamstring would finally be at 100% after his April injury. MBAPPÉ v 600 PASSES PER GAME isn’t so snappy.Spain, despite entering as Europe’s reigning champions, have not garnered the same adoration in their run to a second World Cup final as their fellow semi-finalists. Many wondered how they could possibly contend with France. Online skeptics dished out a greater dishonor, accusing Luis de la Fuente’s side of being boring.There was no hero’s shot of Spain’s coach bellowing to the 70,176 fans in Dallas, asking whether they were not entertained. That isn’t the prize he and his charges are after. Any viewer is allowed to think Spain are dull compared to more breakneck alternatives at this World Cup, but as France learned on Tuesday, their approach is lethal when executed as planned.At Euro 2024, De la Fuente’s side operated in a similar style en route to their fourth continental title. They were a team determined to finish their opponents by making them suffer without the ball. Rodri cemented his Ballon d’Or case by anchoring the midfield and affording his teammates greater attacking involvement with expert shielding. Álvaro Morata made his critics eat crow by finishing the chances provided to him, finally the line-leader to actualize Spain’s potential. On either flank was one of the world’s trickiest young wingers: Nico Williams to his left, Lamine Yamal to his right.Most of those pieces returned for this World Cup. From the back, Unai Símon has left his box with some regularity as the team station themselves further upfield. Rodri has been in rare form this summer, a refreshing sight after his injury-riddled 2025-26 that followed the previous year’s anterior cruciate ligament tear. Fabián Ruiz has stepped up as a capable double-pivot partner, spraying balls up the flank if the lanes to Dani Olmo aren’t glowing.And yet, most of the focus has been on Spain’s relative inability to turn top-notch team play into goals. Lamine Yamal and Williams arrived fresh off of spring injuries; Williams has earned 98 minutes through seven matches and Lamine Yamal is not quite at his unplayable best. Morata missed out on this World Cup squad owing to poor form with Como. In sum, Spain’s brilliant buildup has too often withered upon entering the final third.System play like Spain’s looks far less glamorous without a commanding frontman. Like Queen without Freddie Mercury or U2 without Bono, even the best basslines and beats become background noise without someone commanding attention. A healthier Lamine Yamal might have been that kind of player, but in reality this has been a World Cup dominated by strikers and goalkeepers, not the inverted wingers who have come to dominate the Champions League and Premier League in recent years.Then again, Lamine Yamal did make a crucial impact on the game against France. Attackers know to look for overcommitted and unaware defenders making off-ground clearances, as Mathys Tel found in May. As Lucas Digne readied to side-volley a clearance, he created a window for Lamine Yamal to exploit without the ball. There’s no assist on Lamine Yamal’s ledger for drawing a penalty, but his was an act which created a 0.78-xG chance in a game of fine margins.From there, Spain’s control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaos. Aside from against Paraguay, a team playing with less talent on paper, France played over and through lesser-organized opposition. Their ruthlessness against those opponents branded them as tournament favorites despite a fairly plush path to the quarter-final. Morocco were supposed to give the test they needed but showed up in Foxborough looking dazed and out of ideas before the opening whistle.Spain were hardly so timid, having beaten France at the same stage of Euro 2024 and the 2025 Uefa Nations League. Few national teams have the synergy of Spain, with so many of their players having come up in the post-Guardiola era. This is the football they aspired to play. These are the games they dreamed of winning. And, thanks to incredible commitment to their defensive responsibilities, they did so while cutting off a previously goal-drunken France.Granted, the argument for De la Fuente’s pragmatism grows weaker if Spain don’t capitalize on the luck they created. If Lamine Yamal doesn’t draw that penalty, France wouldn’t be on their backfoot before half-time. If Olmo can’t thread that perfect ball into Pedro Porro’s stride while taking contact, there’s no two-goal cushion. The worst-case scenario played out in their draw against Cape Verde, yet De la Fuente stuck by his principles. After all, a team as good as Spain can break through more often than not if everybody is on the same page.Spain are designed to make opponents suffer if they aren’t at their best. It’s a model that can work against any team in international football. Even – and, given three semi-finals’ worth of evidence, especially – mighty France.

Football News

The full-back was supposed to be busy shackling France’s vaunted front line but found time to score the killer goal at the other end“Let me loose in a prison and I’ll end up owning the place,” Pedro Porro once said. Let him loose in the penalty area and that will belong to him too. The whole world might: to him and the entire gang. When the Spain right-back burst into the box like a jail break, sprinting on to Dani Olmo’s superb layoff, and steadied himself to guide the ball into the net and score the second goal in Dallas, there was still half an hour to go in this semi-final, but it was done. They knew it was. Somehow, it was like they always had.Porro kissed the badge and raced to the corner, his teammates streaming across the pitch and off the bench towards him. He was there to protect them from Kylian Mbappé, the tournament’s top scorer and one member of that terrifying French forward line, projected as if they were the four horsemen of the apocalypse: the toughest, most fearful men in the joint. Or so it goes. Yet he won’t back down, never has, and when it came to the decisive blow, he was the one who delivered it. Instinct had taken over, if only for an instant. And what an instant it was, guaranteeing Spain would go to the World Cup final.This was Porro’s second goal here; he has scored more than he has allowed. There was a moment before the semi-final when he was asked where the balance lay between going at opponents and holding firm, not allowing them past you. “It depends on who you’re playing: against Belgium I was basically with [Jérémy] Doku all game. I only really went forward once,” he replied, adding with perfect timing: “And that was our goal.” Well played, sir. Well played all of you. Here, he went only once too, but it will be for ever. “Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this,” he said.Spain, though, could. There was a reason for that a sense of certainty when Porro scored the second. Not only because the lead was two goals but because the match was theirs. Playing out exactly as planned. Because if he was there to defend, he had done that too. Because they all had; not so much through heroism but through domination, control, mastery of the game. “We knew one of the keys was keeping the ball,” Pau Cubarsí said. France had not been able to hurt them until then and would not be able to hurt them, they knew. Not if they played their way.Which they did. When Unai Simón saved from Ousmane Dembélé on 94 minutes it was only the second time France had had a shot on target. Spain have conceded once all tournament. They were superb, a collective with no flaws. That was seen in how they took the lead and how they now held it, playing out the rest of the game, this historic occasion, with the kind of calm that hadn’t been seen since ... well, since Mikel Oyarzabal scored the penalty that started it all.Of all the people in all the world that could have stood over the penalty that put them 1-0 up, there was no one they would have rather had. “Few things in football make me nervous,” the striker said recently, and penalties are not one of them. The biggest games aren’t either. He has scored in every final he has played, including the winner against England at the Euros two years ago. From the spot, he took Real Sociedad to their first Copa del Rey title in 34 years and another one five years on. He had taken 53 and missed six, scoring 89.65%, and he wasn’t about to miss this one.The quiet man took it with the same conviction and assuredness, the same steel, with which the selección played all afternoon. “We knew that with calm we could hurt them,” Oyarzabal said. With one break for it, they killed them off. Exhausted, Porro made way late on. From the bench he watched Spain see it out to a soundtrack of olés and with a sense of complete superiority.In the stands Xavi Hernández, Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol and Sergio Ramos saw it too. When they won the World Cup in 2010, Porro had celebrated by leaping into the fountain in the Plaza de España in Don Benito, Extremadura. He was a 10-year-old kid whose parents struggled to make ends meet, working all hours, his grandad Antonio took him everywhere. Now, the day after Antonio’s birthday, he and his generation are one step from emulating that side.“This isn’t mine, it is all 26 of us” Porro said. This belonged to him and Marc Cucurella, Aymeric Laporte and Cubarsí, their other absurdly talented 19-year-old. To Rodri, who was on another plane, alongside Fabián Ruiz. To all the men who have been on the road for a month and have one more stop left, the “family”, as the coach keeps calling them, who made France look so ordinary. They may not be stars, Lamine Yamal apart, but this was a victory for the good people. Spain were Spain, just as Luis de la Fuente had asked them to be. “Tranquility is power,” he likes to say, although once in a while, when the time is just right, you have to let loose.

Football News

France finally let loose all their attacking power in this tournament and yet when the big test came against Spain they were too openMaybe Didier Deschamps was right all along. He has been criticised over his 14 years in the France job for being too cautious, for prioritising control, for not unleashing his great fleet of attacking players. In this tournament, his last as national manager, Deschamps has relaxed – from a tactical point of view at least; he remains as grouchy as ever in his public utterances. France have played some glorious football over the past few weeks but when it came down to it, against the first truly elite side they faced, they were overrun. France could have done with being a little more Deschamps.The paradox at this tournament was always that the better France played, the more of a waste the eight years since they won the World Cup appeared. Admiration for their attacking excellence in the US has been tempered by a sense of regret for the potential beauty and joy Deschamps’ cussedness has denied the world over the past decade. This was the France they could have been all that time, playing with elan and panache, evoking legitimate comparison to the glorious France of the early-to-mid 80s.It would be a stretch now to say they stand alongside the Hungary of 1954, the Netherlands of 1974 or the Brazil of 1982 as one of the greatest sides not to win the World Cup, but there was a point before the 1-0 win over Paraguay in the last 16 when that might have seemed an appropriate comparison.Deschamps leaves the job having won a World Cup and reached another final and semi-final. He reached a Euros final and a semi-final. To get to the last four of five major tournaments over a 14-year stretch sounds like a remarkable achievement and in some ways it is. But Deschamps has been blessed with generation after generation of extraordinary players; one trophy with those players is perhaps only par. And there is an argument, voiced most vociferously by those grown weary of his football labeur, that Deschamps, for all his apparent success, held France back.Why then did he change approach? He has been portrayed by some as the arch-pragmatist, committed neither to control nor to something more improvisational, but simply to what seemed best with the players at his disposal. It is indicative of just how out of character Deschamps’ selections have seemed how radically perceptions have shifted.At the Euros two years ago, France were regarded as the dour, defensive unit, playing an unlovely version of the “tournament-ball” that had carried them to the World Cup in 2018, while Spain were the dashing update on juego de posición, capable of retaining possession in midfield but elevated by the pace and directness of their wide forwards. But in this tournament, as France sparkled, it has been Spain, their attacking options from wide diminished by injury, who have suffocated opponents.If you include the Nations League, that is three tournaments in a row in which Spain have beaten France in the semi-final, process football triumphant.There has been a theory that Deschamps has been forced into his reset by the evident brilliance of his creative options, and perhaps that is true, but France have had great attacking options – maybe not quite so many or so varied as they have now – for at least the past decade. Deschamps always seemed reluctant to let his attackers simply play, to release the handbrake; this game was the perfect demonstration of why.There were only two doubts about this France: in midfield and at left-back. It was their misfortune that those matched up with Spain’s two greatest strengths. In the most obvious and direct sense, the penalty came from Lamine Yamal drawing a clumsy foul from Lucas Digne, but on a more fundamental level it was the result of Spain’s domination of midfield.The question over the past few weeks has been whether, against stronger opponents, Deschamps would replace an attacking player with an additional midfielder, changing from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3. France’s creative play was so intoxicating that eventually came to seem impossible, but here it would surely have been a good idea. There were spells in the first half when Aurélien Tchouaméni and Adrien Rabiot were overrun. As it turned out, Deschamps’s solution was not to supplement the pair but to withdraw Rabiot. After a fine tournament, he had an awful first half and, with a booking, was an obvious red-card risk.What if they had played Tchouaméni, Rabiot and Manu Koné from the start? What if they had played only two of Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola alongside Kylian Mbappé? Given how little any of those three contributed, it could not have been any worse. With Spain dominating midfield, the vaunted attacking quartet simply did not get the ball often enough. Spain’s structure stifled them and, with too many players committed to creativity, France were left vulnerable to transitions.In his ultimate defeat, Deschamps achieved his ultimate vindication. Talent is never to be trusted.

Football News

Consider this a spectacular telling-off for anyone tempted to cast Spain as underdogs. How they enjoyed dishing the lesson out here, booking a showdown in New Jersey on Sunday and reducing France to passengers. Didier Deschamps’ team had been billed as champions elect but their feted attack was never in the game. For Kylian Mbappé it will be another four-year wait to reconquer the globe; he was an isolated figure, snuffed out by opponents who completely dictated after going ahead.Spain could partly thank Lucas Digne for terrible defending that conceded a penalty midway through the first half, even if there were some doubts about the award’s validity. Mikel Oyarzabal converted emphatically and the jeopardy thereafter was entirely superficial. Pedro Porro’s slickly-worked second settled the issue emphatically. Nobody will make the mistake of downplaying their prospects of seeing the job through now; France, dazed and resoundingly beaten, cut the figure of a side that could not comprehend what was happening.A football match finally broke out after the unbearably shrill DJ-led buildup that worked tirelessly to demolish any semblance of atmosphere before kick-off. A World Cup semi-final deserves better than this, the closed roof doing nothing to alleviate the oppressive acoustic effect, but the sport has found a knack of riding out most attempts to cheapen it over the past month.These teams do not bellow indistinguishable noises into the eardrums; they are sinuous, subtle, scintillating when controlling the volume themselves. It was no surprise to see Spain sticking with the starting XI that overcame Belgium, meaning Mikel Merino would again be primed for a supersub role. Deschamps enlisted the fit-again Aurélien Tchouaméni in midfield, which felt harsh on Manu Koné, and chose the directness of Bradley Barcola over Désiré Doué’s defter gifts.Barcola skipped past Pedro Porro at the first invitation following six minutes of largely sterile Spain possession. Control would be essential for Luis de La Fuente and his players. An early chance arose for Álex Baena to take a more direct route but he smacked a free-kick into the wall from right of centre.It was that kind of start, Mbappé the next to squander a decent attack when overcooking a pass towards Ousmane Dembélé. When France found some flow, Michael Olise cushioning to Dembélé before a sublime first-time ball towards Mbappé, Spain’s defence were back in numbers.Then Digne’s carelessness blew such a respectful opening spell out of the water. The left-back did not get enough purchase on a cross from the opposite side, the ball popping up off his head and allowing Lamine Yamal to contest. Lamine Yamal nudged it past Digne, seemingly via the upper portion of his arm, and was crudely felled as his opponent panicked.The referee, Iván Barton, had an easy decision to make on that front but there was still the question of whether the video assistant referee would intervene. The on-field decision stood but replays appeared to confirm Lamine Yamal had turned limb towards ball.Oyarzabal, in no mood to reject a gift, swept the spot-kick past Mike Maignan. Within minutes France’s backline had a new disruption to absorb, William Saliba pulling up and making way for Maxence Lacroix. They were having to chase Spain and could not assert any grip in midfield. When Barcola managed another nibble at Porro, he ran out of ideas and slashed wildly over.This was a malaise, Maignan presenting a clearance straight to Baena. The sequence that ensued was thrilling, Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal combining to tee up Fabián Ruiz. It would have been a tap-in for the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder had Dayot Upamecano not appeared from nowhere to block.Spain would have to content themselves with a narrow interval lead but could consider their mission accomplished perfectly so far. For all the pre-match hype, France’s attackers had barely caused a single ripple of anxiety.Koné replaced Adrien Rabiot, a walking red card since being booked early on, for the second period. France needed 11 players but also required an uplift in every area. Instead Spain remained in total command, Oyarzabal shooting over. France could not muster enough of the ball to pose any sustained threat. When they wrought an opportunity to build down the right, Dembélé passed straight out of play.Before the hour it was time for Doué. The bet on Barcola’s speed had failed and things soon deteriorated further. While Spain had been managing proceedings consummately, they had never looked blind to another opening. Porro’s goal was worked beautifully, a tumbling Olmo managing to return his pass as a chasm opened on France’s left side. The finish was unerring; Spain were making this look easy.The scoreline would have given exactly that impression had a narrow offside call not denied Lamine Yamal a third. It was the 64th minute before Mbappé made any kind of impression, Unai Simón batting his cross-shot from the byline behind. Then he saw Marc Cucurella deflect a drive just wide but Deschamps must have been desperate for the three-minute coaching break that followed.It made little difference. Mbappé whipped a free-kick over but Ferran Torres could have added gloss for Spain, who will take some beating now.