Kylian Mbappé came through again, but Les Bleus were put to the test, raising some concerns.
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PHILADELPHIA — The hottest game had ended early Saturday evening and after more than 90 minutes of elbows, shoves and kicks to the shin, the players on France and Paraguay were still hot. Players from both sides pushed. Some yelled. Anger owned the moment.
The scoreboard said France had won, 1-0, to move to the quarterfinals of this World Cup, but those numbers told only part of the story.
France had been tested, and everybody inside the sweltering stadium in South Philly knew it. Paraguay’s defenders had used any means at their disposal to stop France’s great scorers such as Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé, and Les Bleus were moving on only by the grace of a generous second-half penalty kick driven home by Mbappé.
And now, with the final whistle blown and everyone drained and bitter in the scorching late-day sun, Paraguay’s goalkeeper, Orlando Gill, wanted to make peace.
He tried to shake hands with the great Mbappé, perhaps the world’s best scorer whose blistering shots Gill had impossibly stopped from point-blank range. Clutching the game ball in his left palm, he held his right toward Mbappé.
Mbappé, undoubtedly miffed by his inability to find the net more than once, walked past Gill.
For a second, Gill looked stunned. Then he responded in the way that seemed to come naturally to this Paraguay team: with defiance.
He heaved the ball into Mbappé’s back.
“I really got into the moment,” Gill later said apologetically in Spanish. Eventually, he and Mbappé did shake hands.
But the audacity of a goalkeeper in Argentina’s Primera División throwing a ball into the back of soccer’s royal prince said something about the way Paraguay did not shrink before France — and why that might be a serious concern for the team that entered the World Cup as co-favorite.
“It fills me with pride that we were able to avoid giving up goals in this game,” Gill said. “Especially to this team.”
Until Saturday, France had sailed through the tournament, crushing Senegal, Iraq, Norway and Sweden by a combined score of 13-2. Mbappé had been almost comically dominant, appearing to score at will. Suggestions began to fly that this French team might be one of the best in World Cup history.
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Paraguay gave pause to those outlandish expectations. That this side was even here seemed preposterous. Most assumed Saturday’s match would be between France and Germany. Then Paraguay upset that European power on penalty kicks Monday and lived to face a sure vanquishing. After all, France is No. 1 in FIFA’s official rankings and Paraguay No. 34, sandwiched in the crossfire between No. 33 Ukraine and No. 35 Russia. Neither of whom are at this World Cup.
Paraguay frightened France on Saturday. A lot. It lined up a defensive wall of five and six players at the top of the box and stymied the parade of elite French ballhandlers and scorers who kept trying to push inside. Les Bleus had not faced a truly physical team in the World Cup before Saturday, and it showed on an afternoon when the temperature at kickoff was 101 degrees.
France ran all over the field, slipping beautiful passes from player to player. It finished with 510 accurate passes to just 99 for Paraguay. It held onto the ball for three-quarters of the game. When it came to being elegant and skilled, France was tremendous.
But La Albirroja would not let the French close to the goal or in position to take easy shots. Everything was challenged. Attempts by France’s gifted wings to cut deep in the box and curl around defenders were often meet by two Paraguayan players refusing to let them pass. And when someone did get a shot off, the 6-foot-6 Gill was there to knock it away.
“We knew it was going to be very hard,” French midfielder Manu Koné said after the match.
It was even harder than it should have been, which will undoubtedly gnaw at the French players and coaches as they prepare for Thursday’s semifinal against Morocco.
At the end of Saturday’s match, the Paraguayan team was furious with the officials. They never seemed to recover from the shock of seeing France awarded a penalty kick in the 70th minute when, following a review, Diego Gómez was called for tripping France’s Désiré Doué just inside the box. This allowed Mbappé to take his penalty kick, though not before Gill stood on top of the ball and stared down at Mbappé, who is seven inches shorter.
Mbappé tried desperately to fake Gill, starting to run toward the ball, stopping, then starting, then stopping and starting again. Gill almost didn’t fall for the ruse but eventually fell to the right as Mbappé flicked the ball to the right and into the goal.
Some 20 minutes later, after the whistle — and after Gill threw the ball at Mbappé’s back — the French players ran to the south end of the stadium and sang “Freed From Desire” with their fans. They jumped and danced in place, celebrating a tough win.
If Morocco mounts this tough of a test, they might not have anything to celebrate.
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