Key events
Penalty to France
Paraguay have no legitimate complaint. They think it’s a dive? Wrong.
ON-FIELD REVIEW and it would take some tortured logic to avoid giving a penalty here.
-65 min Good run from Doué, who takes a tumble in the box.
We have a foot race the other way, and Saliba outruns Almiron, who falls from exhaustion.
VAR check. This has to be a PK.
Updated at 18.31 EDT
64 min Doué falls just outside the box, but the referee is not impressed. Replay shows the ref absolutely missed it, and the Referee Cam shows it was all but impossible to miss that.
Mbappé shoots from distance, apparently at a different goal somewhere in the third row.
63 min “They’re playing with a confidence and belief right now,” John Strong says of Paraguay as they take a throw-in in the their own half, bang it upfield and immediately turn it over.
60 min Enciso is down and gesturing that he’d like to be replaced. Caballero comes in.
France were already lining up a sub – Doué replaces Barcola.
Paraguay have completed 55% of their passes. Just 60 complete to France’s 346.
59 min Gómez flat-out strips it from Mbappé. France quickly regain it and go up the field.
58 min SUB for Paraguay – it’s Canale for … well, Alderete is down. Is it him? Yes. He’s trudging off very slowly, which should mean that the sub has to wait a minute but that has been erratically enforced. Basically, if you can claim an injury, you get away with it. Sometimes.
57 min Corner kick is an inswinger that Gill adeptly grabs.
Paraguay string together 5-6 passes, but that’s it.
56 min France claim it back and honestly may have been holding Almirón. They combine on the left and earn their 10th corner kick. That’s a lot.
55 min SAVE by Gill. A strong, slightly swerving Koné shot up toward the top of the net, and Gill has to punch it away for a corner.
54 min Gill is back up to take the goal kick. France claim the ball quickly.
Funny how good teams have players that immediately win the ball back, isn’t it?
What a wild sequence that was. Maignan’s distribution was magnificent, a 60-yard punt that landed in front of the onrushing Mbappé in stride.
Juan Jose Caceres clears from Mbappé. Photograph: Kyle Ross/ReutersShare
Updated at 18.21 EDT
51 min Maignan punches it up in the sky. Over to the other side for a Paraguayan throw that goes all the way into the 6-yard box.
Maignan catches that throw and immediately sends up the field for Mbappé, who is past the defense! He misplays it up into his own arm but wins a corner while Paraguay yell for a handball. France take it quickly with only two players up the field, and Dembélé runs into Gill, who’s down.
Ousmane Dembele shoots wide after a quick corner. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 18.19 EDT
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.
ShareHalftime: 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.
France coach Didier Deschamps walks off at half-time. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/ReutersShare
Updated at 18.02 EDT
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.
Kylian Mbappe reacts in pain next to referee Ilgiz Tantashev. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 17.58 EDT
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.
Kylian Mbappe has words with Gustavo Gomez. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 17.44 EDT
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.
Kylian Mbappe rises with Diego Gomez. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 17.46 EDT
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!