Dour France get lucky to sink Belgium in a stinker

Of course, it wasn’t pretty.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

Didier Deschamps won’t care. All that matters, the French coach would strenuously argue, is that they got there. That could be said about France’s winning goal and the very 1-0 last-16 win over Belgium it decided.

After 85 minutes of what had perhaps been the worst football in this tournament – outside, maybe, some of England’s games – substitute Randal Kolo Muani tried a speculative shot that was mishit off the ground and deflected off the unfortunate Jan Vertonghen and in.

The game maybe deserved that, but it’s arguable whether France did. An otherwise sensationally talented squad made their way into the quarter-finals by dour obduracy rather than any creativity or class. It may yet take them to ultimate victory, of course, but it doesn’t make much of it memorable. The most stirring moment of the game was a tackle by Theo Hernandez on Yannick Carrasco.

The best you could say was the goal was at least preceded by a clever angled pass from Antoine Griezmann. That’s it.

That’s all France had in their team by way of playmaking. Kylian Mbappe was crowded out, everyone still waiting for his moment.

It felt like everyone was going to wait for a goal here. Instead, France got their third of the tournament, but not one has been a clean effort into the net from open play.