This new-fangled round of 32 they have in World Cups now is going absurdly well.
The first five games of it have delivered almost everything you could ask. Shocks. A couple of penalty shoot-outs (ludicrous ones, too, which is the correct state of affairs for all penalty shoot-outs). Late drama in every game that didn’t have penalties, thanks to winning goals in the 91st, 94th and 88th minutes.
Big teams going out. Big teams going through. New cult heroes emerging. But it was still only almost everything you could ask for.
What it had lacked was a team laying down a proper We’re The Team To Beat marker.
Safe to say that’s a box that’s now been ticked thanks to an absurd display of attacking might from a France team that has shown plenty of glimpses of it but spent this game in something approaching their final form as a very capable Sweden side were demolished 3-0.
Everyone in that front four – and Desire Doue and Rayan Cherki when they stepped off the bench in another ludicrous display of strength from Didier Deschamps and his squad – was magnificent. But it felt like Michael Olise having his best game of the tournament was significant.
That elevated absolutely everything France did to a whole new level beyond even the impressive group-stage wins.
Sweden didn’t even play badly. They started quite well. They will have reached the first Hydration Break – a necessary rather than infuriating intrusion on this occasion in temperatures nudging 90F in New Jersey, where France will likely return on July 19 – pretty happy with their afternoon’s work in keeping Kylian Mbappe and le lads in check.
That first quarter of the game was quite even. Cagey, almost. A good amount of good old-fashioned Feeling Each Other Out from two teams starting out the real quiz that is tournament knockout football.
The rest of the game was a flurry of fleet-footed, quick-witted brilliance from Les Bleus. Sweden were swept aside; a lesser side would have been utterly humiliated. Sweden still could have been.
France were suddenly carving their opponents apart at will. It became staggeringly easy and, most strikingly, seemingly impossible to stop. You couldn’t even point to specific avoidable or conspicuous errors from Sweden, beyond their fundamental mistake of playing France at all. Each of the three goals was better than the last. But better somehow even than the goals were the near-misses.
Mbappe ended one sweeping move by hitting the post when he seemed certain to score. An outrageous bicycle kick from Olise cannoned off the post before Ousmane Dembele bent the rebound narrowly wide.
Just as it looked as if Sweden might somehow make it to half-time unscathed, Mbappe found himself one-on-one with Viktor Gyokeres. His quickstep shuffled would’ve left a defender for dead. Gyokeres barely knew what had occurred before looking up to see the ball already in the back of the net. Les Bleus were a blur. It is perhaps the single most ‘Well that had been coming’ goal ever scored anywhere by anyone.
The second was all about Olise, who played a perfect throughball for Bradley Barcola with the added sauce of going through a defender’s legs en route.
Barcola’s touch and finish were Mbappe-esque. And it was Olise and Mbappe who combined just as magnificently for goal three.
We don’t want to get bogged down in the Golden Boot race on a day that was all about making a statement over the destination of the real prize, but that’s Mbappe level for now with Lionel Messi on six goals in North America this summer and one behind him in the all-time list.
An absolutely ridiculous performance. The highest praise you can give to an international team is to say their cohesion and understanding and sheer speed matches that of the very best club sides where that familiarity is acquired over months and years of time spent together.
This France attack is starting to have that look. This is how yer da felt watching Brazil in 1982.
We’ve already seen enough in the first couple of days of knockout action here to know that favourites don’t always win, but we’re going to need to see something pretty spectacular to stop France winning their second World Cup of the last three.
Mbappe has never looked better. And we know that’s a big claim. This France team already looks better – certainly as an attacking force – than either the 2018 or 2022 vintage. And we know that’s another big claim Deschamps’ final France team may yet eclipse the lot and go down as his best. And we know… well, you get the idea with that.
