- Mbappe draws level with Messi in the Golden Boot race.
- France prepared for a quarter-final match against Morocco.
- Doue wins decisive penalty after substitute appearance.
Kylian Mbappe converted from the spot in the 70th minute for his 19th career World Cup goal and seventh at this tournament as France outlasted Paraguay to reach the quarter-finals with a 1-0 win on Saturday in a steamy last-16 tie.
With the penalty, earned by substitute Desire Doue’s slalom run into the area, Mbappe moved level with Argentina’s Lionel Messi at the top of the 2026 Golden Boot rankings and moved within one of the 39-year-old for the all-time World Cup goalscoring lead.
That was all Les Bleus needed against a resilient but limited Albirroja side, who offered little going forward but defended admirably and tried to lure their foes into off-the-ball battles in sweltering conditions with temperatures nearing 100 Fahrenheit.
“We knew what kind of game we were going to have,” Mbappe said through an interpreter. “If we have to get our hands dirty, we can do it. We can play ugly football. They thought we’d show up in tuxedos, but we were there. Even in that game, we were better than them. It’s their football – there’s no right or wrong way to play the game. They tried to get at us that way, but we won.”
France advances to face Morocco next Thursday in Foxborough, Mass., in a rematch of the 2022 semifinal that ended in a 2-0 French victory.
Paraguay shocked Germany on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the last 16 on Monday, a result that inspired President Santiago Pena to declare Tuesday a national holiday.
But Albirroja still exited one round short of their best-ever quarter-final in 2010, which doubled as their last World Cup final.
The South Americans frustrated the two-time world champions throughout the first half and well into the second, helped in part by the short-tempered approach of Uzbek referee Ilgiz Tantashev. When he reached for the pocket, it was puzzling to three French fouls, even though Paraguay led 12-9 in fouls.
“It wasn’t easy. They used every trick in the book,” France manager Didier Deschamps said through an interpreter. “It’s not the kind of football that will bring people to the stadium, but they defended well. It’s always difficult against these South American teams.
“I asked the two biggest boys to go and stand around Kylian at the end because they wanted to cut him down.”
But Paraguay had no solution to the injection of energy Doue brought after Deschamps substituted him in the 61st minute for Bradley Barcola.
Moments after Tantashev waved appeals for a foul on Mbappe just outside the box, Doue’s superbly incisive dribbling from the left forced an awkward left-footed challenge on Diego Gomez that required the referee to make a different decision.
Initially he reached the same conclusion and kept his whistle, only to be called to the replay monitor by his VAR manager Juan Lara. Finally, he saw Gomez’s clear mistake.
After some delaying tactics by Paraguay on the spot, Mbappe converted neatly into the bottom right corner as goalkeeper Orlando Gill guessed in the opposite direction.
Clearly fed up with the conditions and their 120-minute effort against the Germans, Paraguay eventually tried to come up with numbers. Substitute Mauricio mustered their first effort on goal in the 90th minute.
But it was France who looked more likely to add another goal, with Gill doing well to deny Mbappe a finish with a stop in the 89th minute and two more in the sixth minute of second-half stoppage time.
“Paraguay leave with their heads held high,” said Gill. “I think we could have done it without the penalty. We did very well in the first half, we avoided all the throughs. It was unfortunate that there was a penalty, but football is like that.”
