France Dominates Sweden in World Cup Showdown
Didier Deschamps stood on the touchline, hands outstretched, bowing to his departing superstar. It was part joke, part tribute, and entirely fitting. Kylian Mbappé had just torn Sweden to pieces.
France were 3-0 up, cruising into the last 16, and still it felt like mercy when Deschamps withdrew Mbappé and Michael Olise with five minutes left. Sweden were dizzy, punch-drunk, and grateful just to see the back of them.
This was a humiliation that could easily have doubled in size. Three-nil going on six.
France announce themselves
From the first whistle, France played like a team impatient with the idea of jeopardy. The attack snapped and whirred, a blur of angles and movement that Sweden never once got to grips with. Mbappé scored twice. Olise set up two. Both of them hit the post.
Olise’s effort, an overhead kick that arced and dropped and skimmed the upright, was a hair’s breadth from being the goal of the tournament. Instead it became a footnote in a performance that felt like a warning shot to everyone else.
Sweden manager Graham Potter could only hold his hands up. His verdict was stark: his side wouldn’t have won even if they had been “perfect”. On this evidence, he was right. France didn’t just beat Sweden; they made them look like the wrong team in the wrong round.
Mbappé struck on the stroke of half-time, then again on 74 minutes, with Bradley Barcola adding the third eight minutes into the second half. The scoreline flattered Sweden. The pattern of the game did not.
As Mbappé sprinted towards his manager to celebrate his first goal, he went straight for Deschamps. The France coach had flown home last week to attend his mother’s funeral. The embrace said as much about the bond inside this squad as any press conference ever could.
By full-time, the conversation had already moved on. Are France about to be remembered like Brazil 1970, who conquered the world with beauty and ruthlessness? Or like Brazil 1982, who dazzled and then died in the knockout rounds? For now, Deschamps will settle for knowing that, on this evidence, nobody will relish finding out.
Mexico wake the Azteca
Hours later and thousands of miles away, another World Cup story crackled into life under dark, threatening skies.
Mexico’s late-night tie with Ecuador at the Azteca was pushed back an hour because of the risk of electrical storms. When the game finally kicked off, it was Ecuador who were struck.
The stadium’s atmosphere, always volatile, felt supercharged. Mexico fed off it. They pressed, they harried, and they found a new hero in teenage breakout star Gilberto Mora, whose energy and invention lit up the first half.
By the 31st minute, Ecuador were two down and clinging on. Julián Quiñones struck on 22 minutes, Raúl Jiménez added the second nine minutes later, and that was enough. Mexico had their first World Cup knockout win since they last hosted the tournament in 1986.
The drought is over. The noise, predictably, is not.
England will walk into that cauldron if they beat DR Congo later today. They have been warned. The Azteca can lift a home side like no other ground on earth, and this Mexico team now has a result to match the mythology.
Haaland and Norway’s Brazilian quirk
If France supplied the exhibition and Mexico the release, Norway brought the late drama.
Their 2-1 win over Ivory Coast swung back and forth, a seesawing tie that refused to settle until Erling Haaland did what Erling Haaland does. The Manchester City striker struck in the 86th minute to decide it, after Amad Diallo had briefly dragged Ivory Coast level.
Norway had led through Antonio Nusa’s 39th-minute opener, only for Diallo to produce one of the day’s outstanding moments. Picking up the ball, he slalomed through challenges and finished smartly for Ivory Coast’s equaliser on 74 minutes. From a day of rich attacking fare, that was plucked as the goal of the day.
It wasn’t enough. Deep into the closing stages, substitute Oscar Bobb threaded an incisive pass and Haaland buried the chance. Norway’s players celebrated with their now-familiar Viking rowboat routine, a rhythmic, chest-thumping reminder that they are no longer just a curiosity built around one superstar.
They now face Brazil in the last 16, and the numbers give that tie an edge of intrigue. Remarkably, Norway remain the only team to have faced Brazil and never lost, with two wins and two draws from their four previous meetings. History doesn’t score goals, but it does plant doubts.
Somewhere in all this, Bobb managed to inspire a different kind of nostalgia. Before his decisive contribution, BBC co-commentator Danny Murphy veered off on a tangent: “I used to have a cat called Bob. He jumped in the back of a Royal Mail van and we lost him. Sad really. Anyway.” The Murphy family, it’s understood, now find Postman Pat a little too close to the bone.
A day that echoed
Across three continents and three very different games, the tournament’s tone darkened for anyone watching from a hotel room.
France looked like champions in waiting, even if football history warns how fragile that status can be. Mexico finally broke a 38-year knockout hoodoo in a stadium built for World Cup epics. Norway marched on with Haaland at the helm and Brazil in their sights, still carrying that improbable unbeaten record.
For those resting, this was not a soothing day. It was a day of omens. And the question now is simple: who, exactly, is ready to face what’s coming?
