Key events
50 min Corner to Paraguay! Long ball catches France unaware, and Almirón knocks the ball off a defender.
49 min Rabiot really shouldn’t have the green light to shoot. That’s another one he has sent flying like any number of military aircraft on July 4.
48 min Better from France. A couple of decent touches in and around the box.
47 min The “passes in final third” stat is astounding.
And we resume with France adding to it.
Dan Sensay: “Something a lot of people forget or just don’t know is that the average climate in Paraguay is extremely hot and humid. They have an advantage in these conditions.”
And our last word at halftime …
Peter Oh: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Irrité!”
With that, we’re back …
A few more
Samuel Hole: “Unless you’re Paraguayan I cannot see how one could support this team. There is no will to play, create etc. They seem to have a bad spirit. Shoving, fouling. Please bring up the lack of control the ref has on this game.”
Aditya Anchuri: “You have to take your hat off to this Paraguay team. Faced with opposition miles better than them, they’ve so far adopted the oldest trick in the book — get in their faces, rattle them and try to upset them.”
Whitepass: “Don’t be too quick to laugh at France, Beau. They might come back after the break to put this match to bed, like Moroccans did against Canada.”
Though in that case, Morocco weren’t doing anything of interest themselves.
Anand: “Strange half. France seem to have had possession without purpose. The lack of space has almost left them blank without ideas on how to make inroads. Curious to see what DD comes up with in the 2nd half. Are we in for another shoot out?
Russell Eberts: “It’s 97° and humid. What could anyone expect from this game? It seems increasingly absurd that the open-air stadiums are being used for mid-day matches during an American summer. I grew up in Indiana, whose climate is similar to the East Coast’s. There are no nice days between May and September. It’s either hot and humid or there are thunderstorms. The choice of host cities and kickoff times will lead to more and more matches like this, particularly as we go deeper into the tournament. It’s as predictable as it is asinine.”
I wouldn’t have minded hosting this Cup solely in Atlanta and Yellowknife.
Lots of mail
Richard: “The French guy rolling around as if he’d been decapitated. Totally ignored by the ref so he gets up as if nothing had happened. Very good reffing this world cup, until it gets to the advert break and then the ref should overrule it.”
In THIS game, I don’t mind it. (In fact, Dylan Wilbanks wrote in to that effect.) I was at the 2008 Olympic final in Beijing, where the stadium doubled as a convection oven. I think that was the first use of hydration breaks in a major event, but all I remember was that it was hot.
Colin Livingstone: “I feel like the ball might be put out more often in a gentlemanly manner, were we not deluged with constant simulation. Miraculous recoveries are pretty much an “every game” event. While the refs have worked hard this tournament to keep the game flowing, I believe they have overcorrected and multiple clear fouls or even bookings have not been given. Balance is hard to get right but we never seem to adjust sensibly but swing from one extreme to the other.”
100%, but this is also valid:
Michael Hayen: “Beau, you seem to have rose coloured glasses on. In the good old days players constantly lay down to get the game stopped. Continuing play has significantly reduced stoppages for ‘injuries’.”
Joe Pearson: “The whole ‘leave the dead where they fall’ behavior seems to be one of many ‘speed up the game’ adjustments. As players have gotten used to simulating injury to stop play, the whole ‘get up, your faker’ may be taking it too far, but I like it.”
Also in the mail: Nice compliment to all Guardian MBM people from Atlanta in my home state of Georgia.
Rick McGahey: “Ref doing a poor job controlling this match, he didn’t whistle that blatant foul against Mbappé soon enough, and then was late to the push and subsequent scrum that stopped play. Paraguayans, not surprisingly, are just going to ground or picking scraps with the French players whenever they can, kind of like watching Atlético Madrid.”
Irritation is now a tactic.
Chris Bubb: “I’ve seen this playbook from Paraguay in numerous Premier League matches over the years. It’s effective but I don’t like it. Makes for an ugly match when only one side is playing with any ambition. Would much prefer to watch Cape Verde.”
There should be a mechanism in which fans can choose one quarterfinalist to eliminate and replace with a team they’d much prefer to see.
Charles Antaki: “For Arsenal fans, all this is triggering memories of Stoke City versus Arsenal, Premier League 2010: Paraguay in the Stoke City strip, of course, and Stoke City players acting the spoilers, as are Paraguay. Memorable not just for the home team’s general nastiness, but especially for a particularly vicious tackle breaking Aaron Ramsay’s leg, to the great amusement of the locals. Hopefully not a portent of things to come here.”
On a less dire note …
Niall Mullen: “It is a shame we won’t get to see Paraguay play Ghana at this World Cup. It would be great to see two teams staring suspiciously at the spherical thing on the centre spot for the full 120 minutes.”
I think that’d be more entertaining than Canada-Morocco.
Halftime: France 0-0 Paraguay
Well, that was simply dreadful.
Mauricio Pocchetino must be laughing hysterically at the billions of dollars’ worth of talent on the field having no success duplicating what his far-less-heralded charges did in Game 1.
45 min +2 Mbappé is making poor decisions now. Faced with two defenders in front of him and several passing options around him, he opts to try to place the ball between the two defenders. When a player in Major League Soccer does that, it’s held up as an example of how bad Major League Soccer is.
45 min +1 Lovely French backheel to Enciso, though he unfortunately only plays his club ball in France and is not a member of their team. Paraguay push forward to little effect.
45 min +1 Rabiot gets bored and shoots. Deflected and collected.
We’ll have only three minutes of stoppage time because we had nothing of interest to take up any time.
45 min Good steal by Paraguay, and they’re off to the … never mind.
But they steal again, and France’s backline scramble back.
43 min Koné takes a few nice touches to create a shooting angle and then shoots way over the bar. Le sigh.
42 min We need three feeds now so we can catch some of the off-the-ball shenanigans.
Paraguay are doing well, though, to push a second defender toward the man with the ball, forcing quicker passes than France want to play.
41 min Good work on the right for France, and Dembélé earns a corner.
An assistant ref reminds a Paraguayan that he must be 10 yards away.
40 min On the corner kick, Cáceres wraps an arm around Mbappé’s neck, but as we all know, that’s legal now. I’m not even going to try refereeing this fall.
Mbappé barks quite a bit at his opponents as the ball goes the other way. Briefly. France possess again.
38 min CHANCE for France on a quick break up the field. Replays shows Galarza smacked Mbappé in the face while the ball was elsewhere, but the referee … didn’t see or didn’t care. Anyway, France get a shot deflected wide for a corner.
37 min Here’s a suggestion – every time the broadcast feed misses an action that warrants anything in any statistical count, Fifa must pay the local organizing committee $1bn.
36 min First save of the game? France take the free kick, it’s badly cleared across the goal mouth but headed out. Corner kick, out to Koundé for a long effort that bounces into Gill’s arms. For some reason, a Paraguayan player is down, and we don’t see what happens next because TV.
35 min Fight! Fight! Fight! It’ll be a free kick for France after Cubas grabs Mbappé with what appears to be three arms. Mbappé gets up, and Cubas starts a shoving match for some reason and is immediately joined by about eight teammates.
34 min Long free kick for Paraguay, easily snared by Maignan, and his attempt to get the ball up the field is rudely interrupted.
33 min Rabiot decides to take France’s xG up over 0.1 by launching one from 35 yards out, way high.
We have a foul at the other end, which you wouldn’t know if you’re watching the world broadcast feed that occasionally decides not to show us the live action.
32 min xG so far: 0.05 to 0.03. Sometimes, that stat is deceptive. Sometimes, it’s not. Paraguay have defended very effectively so far. The USA scored four against this bunch?
31 min CHANCE for France. Paraguay lose sight of Mbappé, who rises for a header but isn’t quite up for it.
29 min Dembélé crosses to an unknown target, but it’s awkwardly deflected.
Barcola grabs Almirón’s shirt, and the Paraguayan falls with such apparent distress that the referee stops play! Paraguay take the free kick and immediately give it back.
28 min Almirón says, “I beat you Philadelphia Union players all the time” and beats the defense down one flank. His cross isn’t great, but it leads to a deflected long-range shot and a missed long-range shot. I think the xG on those is more than what Morocco had after scoring three goals. Which is to say about 0.000003.
27 min A touch for France’s goalkeeper!
Hydration mail
Jan Egil Romestrand: “Just catching the pre-match July 4th celebrations. You’d assume that if the French backroom staff have done their homework, Mbappe et al are all sat in the changing room, wearing face masks and listening to Serge Gainsbourg on headsets.”
Colin Livingstone: “Hydration breaks come in for a lot of criticism, but the real egregious feature of this World Cup is countdowns to kick-off. Please cease and desist.”
I’m trying to remember when that started. A couple of Cups ago?
Kári Tulinius: “Traditionally, Paraguay are a dogged, well-managed, clever side who know their own strengths and weaknesses. If you beat them, you are a good team. They are the Mendoza Line of international football.”
These days, a .200 batting average in the majors is worth the same as winning the Powerball.
23 min Another corner for France, which will probably be our last action before we drink. That just sounds bad, doesn’t it?
It’s sent over the box and bounds out past Mbappé.
Drink!
22 min Good Paraguayan pressure to force some awkward touches, but France simply decided to pass it where other players are not.
France get the ball, and Koné shoots from 25. It’s deflected for a corner.
Yes. We have a shot. At last.
21 min Paraguay with non-possession deep in the French half. It’s as if they took a couple of rugby kicks down the field for better position.
19 min YELLOW to Barcola, who was late to a challenge with Cáceres. It sounded like solid contact, and yet the replay shows … less? Do they have a foley artist on the Paraguayan bench?
18 min Cross attempt blocked, and France will have their second corner. They play short, then play it straight to Paraguay’s Cubas, the Vancouver Whitecaps man attempting to bring some joy to Canada after a game that I plan to erase from my brain.
17 min Is it worth noting that France have not yet managed a shot and have only one touch in the Paraguayan box? Koné plays long for Mbappé to try to change that, but it’s too far.
15 min Thought Barcola might shoot from distance, but he cuts it back and sends it down the left for a cross that Gill handles neatly.
13 min Paraguay should consider converting this squad to a track team. I have no idea how they got back so quickly after that free kick, but they did, and they’re now clogging things nicely.
12 min Koné fouls Galarza, who seems stunned that France would concede a free kick at midfield. He accepts the French midfielder’s hand of apology.
11 min Quick chip over the top for Barcola, and the PSG man times his run so well that I thought he was offside, and replay shows he was about 87 yards to the good. Ball goes too far, though.
10 min Ball goes sailing high. Rabiot falls after the lightest of bumps from Cáceres, who yells at him to get up. The heat is making people grumpy.
But again – I think I’ve been banned from the ref forums. I joke. Maybe. A little. They do seem angry with me.
9 min Off-the-ball foul missed? We’re seeing another absurdity in which we don’t stop play while a player is down. Until about 10 years ago, if a player was down, one team would kick it out and then get a friendly throw-in back in their direction. Then it became the province of the referee to stop play. Now, no one stops plays, and we have injured players down on the field like obstacle-course logs.
6 min When Paraguay do get the ball, they seem insistent on trying to get forward quickly. Maybe they can outrun France in the heat?
5 min Paraguay get the ball and decide to make the most of it, bringing up Cáceres for a long throw. France are not scared.
4 min Almirón is nominally a forward. The Atlanta United favorite is playing defense in his own penalty area.
2 min Guess which team have possession?
Referee is Ilgiz Tantashev of Uzbekistan.
VAR is Juan Lara of Chile.
I think I’m banned from the referee forum now after griping about the Cyle Larin yellow card.
Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Peep! Apologies for not getting to all the email that just came in.
A bit more scouting info
France is good. Like, really good.
While French players seem to be choosing between Real Madrid and PSG at age 12, some Paraguayans have taken a different route.
Check out the general overview here:
Early email, starting with the “biggest upset” question
Steve Tremlett: “Maybe Bulgaria 2 Germany 1 or Romania 3 Argentina 2, both in 1994?”
What a wild tournament that was. I recall Germany didn’t care for the heat.
Lars Bøgegaard: “I didn’t actually witness it myself, but the biggest World Cup upset outside the group stages has to be Brazil-Uruguay 1-2 in 1950 – closely followed by West Germany-Hungary 3-2 in 1954 (which followed a Hungarian 8-3 humbling of the W. Germans in the group stage. In the Euros it has to be a close call between my Denmark XI beating the world champions from Germany I the 1992-final and Greece beating home favourites Portugal in 2004.”
I often remind myself how old I am by remembering that 1950 is to me as 1980 is to a 26-year-old. Usually in musical terms. To a 20-year-old, early R.E.M. is as old in their minds as my mind would think of … I don’t know, Beethoven?
Let’s go for a longer walk on Memory Lane:
Justin Kavanagh: “So all week long, I’ve been hearing people comparing this fine French team to the brilliant Brazilians of 1982. That team of Socrates, Zico and co. dazzled their way to a showdown with a misfiring Italian team, who suddenly found form—and a resurrected poacher called Paulo Rossi—and we all know the rest …
”So who might be France’s bogie team? First they’ll face the doggedly defensive Paraguay; prevail today and it’s Morocco, who looked wobbly in the first half earlier; then, most likely Spain, which could be an all-time classic semi-final; and then, probably, the Argentinians in the final. Again.
”But you know, there is one Italian at this World Cup, who would love an opportunity to outsmart the favorites and send the football world into mourning just like in 1982. Could Carlo Ancelotti somehow contrive to win it all with his unfancied Brazilians? Now that would raise a lot of eyebrows. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I’m suddenly reminded what life was like before dating apps existed.
Rob Vile: “I’m just wondering if you feel a special affinity with Desiré Doué given that you both have first and second names which are French adjectives?”
It’s something I try to block out, given that people in my high school figured out that “Beau” means “beautiful” and “Dure” means “hard.” So that’s “beautiful hard.” Or “pretty hard.” So I’d start hearing, “Wow, that exam was Beau Dure.” I miss my parents, but yeah, I wish they’d thought about that a bit. We always played up the Scottish part of our heritage, anyway.
Totally different note:
Peter Oh: “The capital city of Paraguay is Asunción, as in the Assumption. The holy one. Which brings me to my point. Everyone is assuming that France will cakewalk to a win. But as Samuel L. Jackson’s character in the 1996 film said, when you make an assumption you make an a** out of you and emotion. The name of the film? The Long Kiss Goodnight.”
Head to head
We’ve had several first-time matchups in this World Cup, but this is not one of them. France and Paraguay have met five times, twice in the World Cup:
1958 World Cup: France 7-3
1998 World Cup: France 1-0
2008: 0-0
2014: 1-1
2017: France 5-0
Since losing to Argentina in the 1978 group stage, France haven’t lost to a South American side in the World Cup aside from one penalty shootout:
1986: 1-1 vs. Brazil (4-3 on PKs)
1998: 1-0 vs. Paraguay
1998: 3-0 vs. Brazil (final)
2002: 0-0 vs. Uruguay
2006: 1-0 vs. Brazil
2010: 0-0 vs. Uruguay
2014: 0-0 vs. Ecuador
2018: 1-0 vs. Peru
2018: 4-3 vs. Argentina
2018: 2-0 vs. Uruguay
2022: 3-3 vs. Argentina (lost 2-4 on PKs)
Coming into this tournament, where Paraguay have beaten Turkey and turned aside Germany on penalties, the South Americans’ recent record against European sides is:
1998: 0-0 vs. Bulgaria
1998: 0-0 vs. Spain
1998: 0-1 vs. France
2002: 1-3 vs. Spain
2002: 3-1 vs. Slovenia
2002: 0-1 vs. Germany
2006: 0-1 vs. England
2006: 0-1 vs. Sweden
2010: 1-1 vs. Italy
2010: 2-0 vs. Slovakia
2010: 0-1 vs. Spain
Could the heat push Philadelphia people to build a domed or retractable-roof stadium?
The Stadium Known As Philadelphia Stadium For The Duration Of The World Cup is already 23 years old, so of course, it’s time for a new one.
Paul MacInnes
With an hour to go until kick-off, temperatures here at the Philadelphia Stadium are nudging 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There are umbrellas up everywhere around pitchside to protect the cameras, but supporters in the stands are having to make do with fanning themselves as they do their best to stay cool in sweltering temperatures. Three sides of the ground, which effectively has no covering, are currently under direct sunlight.
Lineups
France (4-2-3-1): Maignan; Digne, Saliba, Upamecano, Koundé; Koné, Rabiot; Barcola, Olise, Dembélé; Mbappé
Subs: Risser, Samba, Gusto, L. Hernández, T. Hernández, Konaté, Lacroix, Kanté, Tchouaméni, Zaïre-Emery, Akliouche, Cherki, Doué, Mateta, Thuram
Paraguay (5-3-2): Gill; Alonso, Alderete, Gómez, Velázquez, Cáceres; Galarza, Cubas, Gómez; Enciso, Almirón
Subs: Fernández, Olveira, Balbuena, Canale, Maidana, Bobadilla, Ojeda, Romero Gamarra, Maurício, Sosa, Arce, Sanabria, Ávalos, Pitta, Caballero
For France, Koné rotates in for Tchouaméni, who was injured in training.
For Paraguay, the lineup is pretty close to the 5-3-2 they unveiled in the 0-0 draw with Australia but changed in a few places from the 4-4-2 that shocked Germany. Alderete returns as a third center back, which means there’s no place for Bobadilla at center mid. Gómez returns from suspension at right mid, pushing Almirón up front and pushing Ávalos to the bench.
Preamble
What’s the biggest upset you can remember from a World Cup knockout round?
Not the group stage. The record books are full of teams that lost their first games to an unheralded underdog but went on to reach the final.
But the knockout round? Morocco and Croatia have pulled off a few surprises in the last two World Cups. Host nations occasionally pull off a shocker.
If Paraguay were to eliminate France today, that might raise the bar.
Weather can sometimes be a great equalizer, and it’s currently 100 degrees. That’s Fahrenheit, or else water would be boiling at midfield. In Celsius, that’s 37.7778, but it’s July 4, so we’re using US degrees. Also, “100” has a nicer ring to it than “37.7778.”
So, ordinarily, you might say France could win this game without breaking a sweat. That seems unlikely today, given the weather if not the opposition.
Didier Deschamps’ players have been far and away the best team in the tournament so far. But he says Les Bleus won’t be taking Paraguay lightly today.
“They are not here by chance. Germany are a top side, and they have that South American DNA, which means they get stuck in,” Deschamps said. “And they have good players too. You can’t just qualify for the last 16 of the World Cup like that by chance.”
The US are now one of only two-co-hosts left in the World Cup after Canada went down to defeat to Morocco, who will face the winners of this game. You can pick over the Canada match report here:
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s a brief guide today’s game:
What to watch for
France might be unstoppable. Didier Deschamps’ side have flattened every opponent they have faced at the 2026 World Cup so far with their forward line of Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele and Michael Olise scoring and creating goals for fun. Les Bleus are playing like favorites.
Paraguay, however, know what it takes to upset the odds having already knocked out Germany. The South Americans have never beaten France in four previous meetings spanning 68 years, but have a game plan that could make it difficult for the World Cup favorites to break them down.
Player to watch: Michael Olise, France – By registering a brace of assists in the win over Sweden, Olise highlighted his importance to France as their creator-in-chief. He might be even better as a number 10 than a right winger.
