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<\/p>\nFOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2014 Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 had a goal and an assist after missing a first-half penalty kick, Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 also scored and France beat Morocco 2-0 Thursday in the World Cup quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s goal in the 60th minute was the 20th of his World Cup career and came in his 20th match at the tournament, moving him one behind Argentina captain Lionel Messi. Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 scored his fifth goal of the tournament in the 66th.<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 was taken down in the 76th minute and was taken off for a substitute a minute later. He was then shown sitting on the bench with an ice pack on his right ankle.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After the match and with both shoes on, Mbapp\u00e9 ran and jumped in celebration with his teammates.<\/p>\n
France will face either Spain or Belgium in the semifinals in Dallas on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
France beat Morocco by the same score in the semifinals of the 2022 tournament in Qatar when the Atlas Lions became the first African team to make it that far. France now remains on track to become only the third nation to play in the final of three consecutive World Cups.<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 got his goal with a perfectly placed shot just inside the far post after Morocco failed to clear the ball. He received the ball just outside the area, took a couple steps forward and then sent his shot sailing into the net. He extended both arms and ran to the sideline to celebrate with his teammates.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s second goal came after Mbapp\u00e9 took a pass and tapped it back for Demb\u00e9l\u00e9. Mbapp\u00e9 kept running forward and took defenders with him, opening space for Demb\u00e9l\u00e9\u2019s shot.<\/p>\n
France held a 21-4 advantage in shots on goal and 8-1 edge in shots on target for the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very disappointed. We wanted to go on,\u201d Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi said. \u201cWhen we had ball possession, our transitions were not great and we had to run a little more. Their players were in their comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 also had the first shot on goal of the game, just missing wide right in the fourth minute. Then, in the 25th, he was running up the left side when he was chopped down in the box by Morocco defender Noussair Mazraoui. Referee Facundo Tello quickly pointed to the penalty spot.<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 lined up waiting for his attempt but was held up by a lengthy video review. He was finally cleared to shoot in the 28th minute, but after a hesitation, Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s shot toward the right corner was corralled by goalkeeper Yassine Bounou, who guessed the direction of the shot correctly.<\/p>\n
Mbapp\u00e9 made his only other penalty attempt at this year\u2019s World Cup in France\u2019s 1-0 victory over Paraguay in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
Still, France was by far the more active team offensively in the first half, holding a 13-1 advantage in shots on goal.<\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s best opportunity came just before the halftime whistle when Achraf Hakimi sent a free kick from just outside the box past the right post.<\/p>\n
Hightower writes for the Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2014 Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 had a goal and an assist after missing a first-half penalty kick, Ousmane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[149118,217,24418,48,52,51,3556,47,50,49,63,24644,152492,100,24026,157979,13824,7785,2429,5393],"class_list":["post-392725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-daily-recap","tag-day","tag-france","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-live-update","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-memorable-moment","tag-morocco","tag-news","tag-plenty","tag-quarterfinal-match","tag-result","tag-schedule","tag-thursday","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}