World Cup: Quarter Finals 1/2
France vs Morocco and Spain vs Belgium
Ok, thank you for waiting as I dealt with toothache issues. Anyway, some football happened. Shall we talk about it?
France 2-0 Morocco
Coming up against France must be an emotionally brutal experience.
You can tactically adapt your game. You can spend a long time working on structure and automatisms and all the things you need to do. You can go to the ends of the earth doing absolutely everything you can to get the most out of whatever raw talent you possess.
France won’t do any of that. And they’ll still beat you. They have the best players.
Morocco played a low block aimed at frustrating France and it worked for long stretches. I still don’t see France having answers to this beyond “our players do their thing”. The big chance of the first half came when they got to counter attack into space, with Michael Olise picking out Kylian Mbappé before Noussair Mazraoui stuck a leg out and gave away a penalty. Perhaps the “cool” thing for players claiming to be the best in the world is to miss penalties now, because Mbappé had a shocker of an effort.
Outside of the penalty, France were reasonable at creating chances. I’m not sure they’re especially impressive at breaking down set defences, but the moment you get just a little exposed, they can open you up like a book. Every slight mistake becomes a counter. As soon as Olise can pick out Mbappé, Désiré Doué or Ousmane Dembélé running into space, it’s too late.
The first goal came in what must have felt brutal to Morocco’s defenders. Mbappé had the ball on the edge of the ball against a low block. They were reasonably tight to him with three red shirts right in front of his view of the goal. And then Mbappé just struck the ball perfectly. Morocco made mistakes in this game, but that situation was a true one where there’s nothing you can do to stop him. He has so little space to get any kind of shot away, let alone one that good. Sorry, guys, but Mbappé is French and that’s that.
During the 2010s, it felt like most of the major superstars couldn’t deliver for their countries the way they did at club level. This era is different, with the tier one biggest names almost all performing at the World Cup. Mbappé has led the way on that, and it’s really been a delight to see. He’s almost certainly ending his career as the tournament’s top scorer, and it’s not just because he’s really good at football. It’s because he always turns up at the World Cup. If he retired tomorrow, I’d remember his best performances for France first, before PSG or Real Madrid. I didn’t think that would happen again with a major global superstar.
The second goal was another individual doing his thing, this time Dembélé. Normally we’d be thinking about how to get all of these guys in a coherent tactical framework where they can complement each other and use the space on the pitch best. The French model sometimes feels like: “why bother? We have the best players. If we make sure they’re in the right frame of mind to give it their best, we will win”. They’re always solidly disciplined in defence, though without really getting tested most of this tournament. In attack, though, it’s superstars and vibes.