July 10 – With some attacking aplomb, France dispatched Morocco 2-0 to reach the last four of the World Cup. 

In the end, it had to be Kylian Mbappe, the talisman for Les Bleus, who delivered a strike of beauty to liberate France and steer the  2018 winners and 2022 runners-up to the last four of the World Cup after they had laboured and toiled for an hour in the sun of Massachusetts. 

Mbappe’s goal was his 20th in World Cup finals, five more than Brazil’s Ronaldo and eight more than Pele. He remains one goal behind Lionel Messi, but is joint top scorer with the Argentinian in this competition. 

His goal was worthy of the landmark. At the hour mark, Mbappe received the ball on the edge of the box and, with almost no space to work with, bent it into the far corner. The strike defied physics. 

He also had a hand in the second goal, six minutes later, when Ousmane Dembele ran into the space left by Mbappe and drove home. In a ma tter of minutes, the French had their opponents on the canvas.

There was something relentless about Didier Deschamps’s side in the final third that suggests the team will be difficult to contain if they are en route to a third world crown in the space of 28 years. 

And yet, just about everything frustrated the French in the first hour. Even Mbappe proved that he was not infallible. From the penalty spot, Moroccan goalkeeper Yassine Bonou had little work to do to stop Mbappe’s soft penalty in the 28th minute. After an inexplicably long wait for VAR confirmation that it was a penalty, the Frenchman opened his body too soon and dispatched the ball with too much nonchalance.

Lucas Digne rattled the woodwork with a long-distance shot, but the French lacked incisiveness. It took Les Bleus 35 minutes to engineer an opportunity. In the last ten minutes of the first half, they accelerated. Desperate, Morocco struggled to cross the halfway line and had a single attempt. 

In the second half, the Moroccans, playing too negatively and too slowly in possession, were punished. They could have been forgiven. How else could they contain this French side? How else could they have prevented Mbappe from scoring that marvellous opener, almost out of nowhere, with no space at hand? 

With Morocco’s exit, the last African side has departed from the tournament – after nine out of ten African participants progressed from the group stages.

At the 2022 World Cup, the North Africans reached the last four, a historic achievement, but this time, they went home a round earlier. The French however march on and it’s difficult to see any opponent – Belgium or Spain – preventing them from reaching a third World Cup final in a row. 

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