World Cup fans have spotted a peculiar moment while France celebrated their second goal against Morocco on Friday morning (AEST).
Moments after Ousmane Dembele scored the second goal 65 minutes into France’s 2-0 win over Morocco, the entire team was seen huddled up on the sideline in wild celebrations.
However as star wide playmaker Michael Olise jogged over to join his team, substitute goalkeeper Brice Samba stepped onto the field from the bench and pushed him away while shouting at him to stay inside the field of play.
You can watch the bizarre moment in the video above
While many viewers may have considered it to be an unnecessarily brutal move by Samba, eagle-eyed fans have now realised the reserve keeper made a genius play from the bench.
That’s because of a little-known rule which states that for play to restart, all players, except the player taking the kick-off, must be in their own half of the field of play.
In effect, it means that if every France player was off the pitch, Morocco would have been able to take the kick-off immediately and stroll the ball into an empty net to cut the deficit in half.
A similar incident unfolded in the 2022 World Cup final, when Dayot Upamecano was shoved back onto the pitch by Theo Hernandez.
Samba was therefore on alert to prevent a French catastrophe.
And a few eagle-eyed fans managed to make sense of the incident, sharing their realisations to social media.
One fan wrote on X: “At least one player has to be on the field or else the opponents can restart and score easily.”
And a second added: “Look how committed the French back-up goalkeeper is. Fully dialled into the game and smart. That is how you build teams and win championships.”
It was another barnstorming performance from France, who will play Spain in the semi-finals at 5am on Wednesday morning (AEST).
They brushed off Kylian Mbappe‘s penalty miss – after he was delayed from taking it for more than three minutes – to surge clear in the second half.
Mbappe was the first to get on the scoresheet with a sumptuous finish from range.
Dembele then added the second with a low effort into the bottom corner.
– with The Sun