New Jersey
\nKylian Mbappe scored twice and Michael Olise was in scintillating form as France beat Sweden 3-0 at the World Cup on Tuesday and set up a last-16 clash with Paraguay.
\nMbappe finished a superb move to break the deadlock just before half-time in the last-32 tie watched by 80,663 at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, after France had already hit the woodwork twice \u2014 once through Mbappe and once through Olise.
\nThe French were on top throughout against a limited Swedish side, utterly dominating in terms of possession and shots on goal.
\nOlise set up Paris Saint-Germain winger Bradley Barcola for the second on 53 minutes, and then delivered a delightful pass for Mbappe to complete a convincing victory.
\nMbappe\u2019s strikes saw him move level with Lionel Messi on six goals in the all-star golden boot race at this World Cup.
\nThe France captain now has 18 World Cup goals in total, meaning he is just one behind Messi\u2019s overall record of 19 \u2014 a mark which 27-year-old Mbappe will keep chasing.
\nHe celebrated his first goal by running across to embrace coach Didier Deschamps, who missed France\u2019s final group game against Norway to travel home for his mother\u2019s funeral.
\nDeschamps will step down at the end of the competition after 14 highly successful years in charge.
\nGoing out in the last 32 would have been such an anti-climactic way to depart for Deschamps, who captained the first France team to win the World Cup in 1998 and coached them to glory in 2018.
\nIn 1998, France\u2019s run to victory on home soil included a 1-0 last-16 win over Paraguay, when Laurent Blanc scored a golden goal in extra time.
\nLes Bleus will face the South Americans in the last 16 again this time, on Saturday in Philadelphia.
\nFrance will be fully expected to win and march on.<\/p>\n
Olise on another planet
\nMbappe and Olise were again central figures, with Ousmane Dembele also showing flashes of his brilliance while Barcola was preferred to Desire Doue as the fourth forward.
\nSweden have quality in attack too, with the Premier League trio of Viktor Gyokeres, Alexander Isak and Anthony Elanga. But they couldn\u2019t get enough of the ball to create chances and Graham Potter\u2019s team now go home.
\nGetting this far should really be seen as a success for them, however, after they only made it to North America through the back door of the play-offs.<\/p>\n
Intense pressure
\nOlise released Mbappe through the middle to put the ball in the net in the 20th minute, only for a tight offside call to cut short the celebrations.
\nHowever, that sparked an intense spell of French pressure which eventually resulted in the opening goal.
\nSome of their football was mesmerising, as Mbappe hit the post from a Jules Kounde ball across the face of goal and Adrien Rabiot fired narrowly over.
\nOlise then struck an upright with a breathtaking overhead bicycle kick before Dembele put the rebound wide.
\nThe opener came right on half-time, after an Olise effort was tipped behind by Swedish \u2019keeper Jacob Widell Zetterstrom.
\nDembele and Olise combined at the resulting corner before finding Mbappe, and he did the rest.
\nSweden needed the interval to regroup, but they conceded again eight minutes after the restart as the magical Olise threaded a pass through the legs of Gustaf Lagerbielke for Barcola, who lashed in.
\nOlise couldn\u2019t score when clean through, but soon after he delivered an exceptional assist for Mbappe to curl in again on 74 minutes.
\nFrance look untouchable even if the toughest tests are still to come, although Paraguay will find it hard to live with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Jersey Kylian Mbappe scored twice and Michael Olise was in scintillating form as France beat Sweden 3-0 at the World Cup on Tuesday and set up a last-16 clash with Paraguay. Mbappe finished a superb move to break the deadlock just before half-time in the last-32 tie watched by 80,663 at the MetLife Stadium …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99737","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\/99737","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=99737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99753,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99737\/revisions\/99753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}