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<\/p>\nKylian Mbappe of France scored his 19th career World Cup goal, finding the net on a penalty-kick in the Round of 16 against Paraguay on Saturday and drawing within one goal of record holder Lionel Messi of Argentina.<\/p>\n
Mbappe stutter-stepped on his way to his 19th goal in 19 World Cup appearances, beating Paraguay goalkeeper Orlando Gill in the 70th minute to break a scoreless tie. France\u2019s captain was awarded the penalty when Diego Gomez was called for tripping after a video review.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve said from the first day that he had the spirit. He gave all the athletic efforts,\u201d France coach Didier Deschamps said after Les Bleus won 1-0. \u201cHe\u2019s a great top-notch player on the pitch. But when he speaks, he speaks for the entire group.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo: AFP<\/p>\n
It was the seventh goal of this tournament for Mbappe, matching Messi in the race for the Golden Boot for the World Cup\u2019s top scorer. Mbappe won that award four years ago in Qatar, but Messi and Argentina beat France in the final.<\/p>\n
Mbappe is the only player to score at least three goals in the knockout stage of three World Cups. On Saturday, he endured against perhaps the most physical opponent he has faced in this tournament.<\/p>\n
Tempers flared in the first half when Andres Cubas took down Mbappe and the teams briefly pushed and shoved each other. Matias Galarza also threw his right elbow into Mbappe and sent him crashing to the grass.<\/p>\n
After Mbappe ignored Gill\u2019s attempt at a postgame handshake, the goalkeeper threw a ball at the France player\u2019s back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew what kind of match it was going to be. We can also get our hands dirty, we know how to do it,\u201d Mbappe said in French. \u201cWe know how to play ugly football. Guess they were thinking we were going to show up in tuxedos, but we were ready. Even at that kind of game, we were better than them. That\u2019s their style of football. There\u2019s no right or wrong way to play the game. They tried to beat us that way, but we won.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victory cleared the way for Mbappe to continue chasing Messi\u2019s career goals record.<\/p>\n
Messi scored his 20th career World Cup goal in Argentina\u2019s 3-2 win over Cabo Verde on Friday night. Messi also has goals in a record eight consecutive World Cup games.<\/p>\n
Norway\u2019s Erling Haaland and England\u2019s Harry Kane are next in the Golden Boot race with five goals each.<\/p>\n
If there is a tie in the Golden Boot standings when the tournament ends, FIFA uses assists as the first tiebreaker and fewest minutes played as the second tiebreaker. Mbappe has a 2-0 lead over Messi in assists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kylian Mbappe of France scored his 19th career World Cup goal, finding the net on a penalty-kick in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,101751,101750],"class_list":["post-236211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-the-taipei-times","tag-101750"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}