Marseille
\nKylian Mbappe has been on Lionel Messi\u2019s heels as both players break new ground in World Cup scoring, but the Frenchman is more obsessed with lifting the trophy in New York on July 19 than becoming marksman supreme.
\nThe 27-year-old netted a double as Les Bleus crushed Sweden 3-0 in the round of 32 on Tuesday to move one shy of Messi\u2019s record 19 goals at World Cups and join him at the top of the scoring charts in this edition with six.
\n\u201cI think the goal, as I said, is to go as far as possible \u2014 to make it to (the final on) July 19th and come back here,\u201d Mbappe, who scored his 18 goals in 18 games, told reporters.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re trying to win; we\u2019re taking it one step at a time. Of course, the more goals you score, the higher you climb in the rankings \u2014 I\u2019m not telling anyone anything new there.\u201d
\n\u201cBut I\u2019m also convinced that Leo is going to score more goals, so I don\u2019t focus too much on that. I\u2019m more focused on the opponents we might face and how close we\u2019re getting to our goal: the final.\u201d
\nMessi\u2019s Argentina face minnows Cape Verde in the last 32 on Friday. France next take on Paraguay for a place in the quarter-finals, where they would face either co-hosts Canada or Morocco.
\nParaguay took an ultra-defensive approach against Germany to knock the four-time world champions out on penalties in the last 32 on Monday, and there is little chance that they will go out swashbuckling against France in Philadelphia on Saturday.
\nLes Bleus will not take anything for granted and will do their homework, Mbappe warned.
\n\u201cI think we\u2019ll keep working between now and the Paraguay match to see what we can improve, because there are still some sequences that aren\u2019t quite clear enough, there\u2019s room for improvement,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cStill, I think it\u2019s positive overall, and our ability to score goals means we always have the chance to take the lead in matches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marseille Kylian Mbappe has been on Lionel Messi\u2019s heels as both players break new ground in World Cup scoring, but the Frenchman is more obsessed with lifting the trophy in New York on July 19 than becoming marksman supreme. The 27-year-old netted a double as Les Bleus crushed Sweden 3-0 in the round of 32 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99751,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99734\/revisions\/99751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}