MIAMI, July 18 (Reuters) \u2013 England held off a stunning France fightback to claim a 6-4 victory in a madcap Miami thriller on Saturday, securing third place for their best World Cup finish since their sole title triumph in 1966.<\/p>\n
In \u200ba match where defending was a second thought, Kylian Mbappe scored two goals \u200cto become the top scorer of all time in World Cups as France battled back from 4-0 down to come within a handful of missed chances of equalising.<\/p>\n
Bukayo Saka completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot three minutes from time to make it 5-3 and calm England\u2019s nerves, having scored twice in the \u200cfirst half \u200bafter goals from Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa had \u2060given England the perfect start.<\/p>\n
There was \u2060still time for a late strike from Ousmane Dembele to offer France some hope, but late substitute Jude Bellingham snuffed it out with his seventh goal of the tournament deep into stoppage time.<\/p>\n
The total of 10 goals was the highest for a third-place \u200bplayoff match, bettering France\u2019s 6-3 victory over West Germany at the 1958 tournament.<\/p>\n
France, hoping to send 2018 World Cup-winning coach Didier Deschamps home with a victory in his final \u2060match in charge, exploded into life in the second \u2060half with Mbappe\u2019s double taking his tournament tally to 10 goals.<\/p>\n
That \u200btook him two ahead of Lionel Messi in the race for the Golden Boot as the \u200btournament\u2019s top scorer and saw him pass the Argentine as the all-time World \u200cCup leading scorer with 22.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old Messi will have one more chance to bump up his own tallies on Sunday when Argentina take on Spain in the final at New York New Jersey Stadium.<\/p>\n
The clash to decide third place is the match that no team wants \u2060to play and both coaches rejigged their teams with Deschamps putting out a second-string defence.<\/p>\n
Perhaps stung by criticism of England\u2019s passivity in the latter stages of their semi-final loss to Argentina, Thomas \u2060Tuchel\u2019s side attacked from kickoff \u200cwith Rice charging forward to lash home the opening score as \u2060early as the third minute.<\/p>\n
Even with Bellingham and Harry Kane on \u200bthe \u200cbench, England played passes that went forward rather sideways and several \u200bsplit the French \u2060defence wide open.<\/p>\n
The second half was all France, with Mbappe\u2019s two goals either side of a Bradley Barcola strike reducing the deficit to 4-3 in the 66th minute.<\/p>\n
England, on the ropes defensively, still tried to attack when the opportunity presented itself and secured third place for the first time after losing the playoff in 1990 and 2018.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in New York, \u200bediting by Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI, July 18 (Reuters) \u2013 England held off a stunning France fightback to claim a 6-4 victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-345101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}