France beat Paraguay 1-0 despite 'disgraceful' and 'embarrassing' tactics from the South Americans, advancing to the 2026 World Cup quarter-finals. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
The match was played in Philadelphia in extreme heat of 38.3°C. Paraguay players committed several rough acts: Andres Cubas clattered into Adrien Rabiot, Juan Jose Caceres kicked out at Kylian Mbappe, and Gabriel Avalos dropped his elbow into Dayot Upamecano's stomach. However, no Paraguay player was booked, while France's Manu Kone, Bradley Barcola and Michael Olise received cautions.
"Paraguay's players were an absolute disgrace," former England goalkeeper Joe Hart told BBC One. "If they were on my team, I'd be dragging them off the pitch."
"It was embarrassing to see," former England defender Micah Richards said. "Paraguay are better than that. Defensively they were so good and they didn't need to get into these antics."
The decisive moment came with 20 minutes left: Diego Gomez brought down Desire Doue, and referee Ilgiz Tantashev awarded a penalty. Paraguay players crowded the official to delay the kick, and Gustavo Velazquez tried to scuff the penalty spot. Mbappe scored his seventh goal of the tournament to go level with Lionel Messi in the Golden Boot race.
After the final whistle, Velazquez tried to confront France players. France boss Didier Deschamps said: "There were some insults from the other bench we could have done without."
France will face Morocco in the quarter-final (Boston, Thursday, 21:00 BST).
Mbappe is one behind Messi in the all-time World Cup goalscorers list with 19 goals. Since 2018, he has scored 11 goals in knockout stages — more than Brazil (10), England (10), Portugal (9) and Spain (4).