The men’s World Cup final between Argentina and France will be played on Sunday, December 18. The broadcast on channels starts at 4 p.m. Bronze match Morocco-Croatia (MTV) on Saturday, December 17. follows the World Cup in this article.
France beat Morocco 2–0 in the semi-final of the World Cup. The goals scored Theo Hernandez and Randal Kolo Muani. In the final match, France will face Argentina, who beat Croatia 3–0 in their own semi-final.
Urheilu’s football expert Jonne Kunnas says that France theoretically won the match with their 1-0 goal in the 5th minute of the game.
It was also helped by the forced exchange during Morocco.
Morocco started the match with a line of five defenders. The captain who injured himself in the semi-final against Portugal Romain Saiss had to leave the field in the 21st minute of the match. He was replaced by a midfielder Selim Amallah.
Due to the early losing position and the change in player grouping, Morocco was almost forced to gain control of the ball.
– After the opening goal, France was allowed to play the kind of football they want. The team wants to give the opponent ball control, and then start counterattacks, Kunnas states.
Morocco overshadowed Mbappe
Morocco succeeded in the same thing as France’s quarter-final opponent England: almost completely overshadowing the French star Kylian Mbappe’s.
Morocco attacked most of the match (52.4%) from their point of view from the right wing, i.e. Mbappe’s wing.
– Morocco was able to find more space on the right, because Mbappe has relatively little defensive responsibility in his team. After losing the ball, Morocco had more players on the side of the field from which Mbappe tries to launch a counterattack, says Kunnas.
Still, Mbappe’s dangerousness in France’s attacks was highlighted in the semi-final match. One excellent delivery of the ball in the Moroccan penalty area decided the match once and for all.
In the 79th minute, Mbappe played with the ball past two Moroccan players and decided to try to score. The shot bounced off the Moroccan defender’s leg and into the back post, where Kolo Muan, who was waiting, easily completed the 2-0 goal.
– And even if Mbappe is completely blacked out during the match, France have played an excellent tournament in attack Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele and Olivier GiroudKunnas states.
After the final whistle, Mbappe ran to lift his club teammate, Morocco by Achraf Hakim up from the surface of the field.
The stars of the national team playing in the French team Paris Saint-Germain are known to be each other’s best friends, and it was visible in the warm encounter between the pair. After the match, Mbappe and Hakimi hugged warmly and exchanged jerseys.
What is Argentina doing?
How should Argentina react to Mbappe’s attacking threat? At least in the previous playoff matches, neither England nor Morocco were able to stop France, although the star player was kept out of good goal positions.
Expert Kunnas believes that Argentina also wants to do their best to prevent Mbappe’s advances on the wing. However, there is a player in Argentina’s lineup that France has yet to face in this tournament – Lionel Messi.
– You have to remember that France has to focus on defending Messi. In the final match, there will be two of the world’s absolute best attacking players on the field, Kunnas estimates.
According to him, it is pointless to compare Mbappe and Messi against each other, because both players have different responsibilities in their teams.
– Of course, they have a massive impact on the game. Mbappe can go up to 30 minutes without touching the ball, but still be able to create a scoring opportunity for himself or a teammate in an instant. Messi, on the other hand, is more on the ball, and he has a bigger responsibility in the quarterbacking phase of the team.
In this World Cup tournament, Mbappe and Messi have participated in attacks clearly more than other players.
Kolo Muani entered the field 44 seconds before his goal and finished the match with his first touch of the ball. The hit was Kolo Muan’s first A national team goal in his career.
“Moroccans are proud”
In France, the second consecutive place in the finals was celebrated all over the country. For example, in the capital Paris, people gathered around the Arc de Triomphe with torches and fireworks.
The Arc de Triomphe is along one of the main streets of Paris, the Champs-Elysees. According to media reports, there were even more than 2,000 riot police.
French media BFM says (you switch to another service), that France had prepared for unrest after the semi-final match with up to 10,000 police and gendarmes. BFM says that a group of hundreds of supporters were dispersed from Riemukaari at midnight Finnish time.
In Montpellier, southern France, supporters of Morocco and France clashed, reports the local newspaper Midi Libre Montpellier. The paper published On Twitter (you will switch to another service) video of the supporters’ skirmish.
Morocco’s supporters watched the match in rapt attention in the country’s largest city, Casablanca. Abou Reda El Kadmiri told news agency Reuters that the team played excellently.
– Moroccans are proud. The team represented us in front of the Arab world and the whole world.
El Kadmiri said that a place in the semifinals was a distant dream for him, which became a reality on Wednesday night. According to him, Moroccans can also be proud of their country in the future.
– We had faith and ambition that we would go to the final, further than we did today, El Kadmiri said at the end.
Correction 15.12. 10:42 a.m.: Casablanca is not the capital of Morocco.