France scored early, played through driving rain in Philadelphia, sat through a long weather delay, and simply controlled its game against Iraq for all 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Iraq at times has played well but has now lost its first two games at the tournament as it has made continuous mistakes \u2013 first against Norway and now against France.<\/p>\n
Here are my takeaways:\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defining stories of this World Cup have yet to be written, but it would not be a surprise if this will be remembered as an international tournament where many of the sport’s greatest players all shined together. Earlier in the day, Argentina star Lionel Messi became the World Cup\u2019s all-time leading scorer with his 18th goal, but that record might not last for long with the way Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 has been playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
France\u2019s all-time leading scorer opened the scoring against Iraq with a magnificent strike for his 15th career World Cup goal. He is just the fourth player to reach that mark, behind Messi, Germany’s Miroslav Klose, and Brazil’s Ronaldo. Then in the second half, Mbapp\u00e9 took advantage of another Iraqi blunder at the World Cup to score his 16th goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The caveat is that Mbapp\u00e9 is still only 27 years old and could still have multiple World Cups ahead of him, and he might eventually become the tournament\u2019s greatest ever player.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This World Cup has been an incredible gathering of historic talent. Along with Messi and Mbapp\u00e9, you have also seen multiple goals from Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah, and Harry Kane. That number will only increase as more teams begin playing multiple games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much of the attention surrounding this French team is on Mbapp\u00e9 as he now chases Messi\u2019s scoring record, with both stars picking up right where they left off after the 2022 final.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Michael Olise\u2019s contributions continue to be first-rate as he shows the world why he is one of the best wingers in the world for both France and Bayern Munich. In his last three appearances for France \u2013 going back before the start of the World Cup \u2013 Olise has three goals and two assists.\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Photo by Terence Lewis\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Another big story for France out of Monday’s game was that 2025 Ballon d\u2019Or winner Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 scored his first ever World Cup when he put France up 3-0. That was always a question when that burden would finally be lifted, and now it has finally happened. The potential now is that Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 is more relaxed and comfortable at the World Cup. That is bad news for any team hoping to stop Les Bleus.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is far from just Mbapp\u00e9. His supporting cast, especially Olise and Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, is world-class. They all showed it in this game.\u00a0<\/p>\n This game featured the first weather delay of the World Cup when a thunderstorm kept players in the locker room for over two hours. It raised the question of how the respective teams would respond.<\/p>\n In this game, France responded very well. Iraq was likely content to only be trailing by one goal at halftime, and the first half took a lot of energy from Graham Arnold\u2019s players to get to that point. France, meanwhile, was likely frustrated to have only one goal at that point.\u00a0<\/p>\n The long break saw the game revert towards how it was expected to be. France played very nice soccer in the early parts of the second half while Iraq did not look like the team that was keeping it close in the first half.<\/p>\n France\u2019s professionalism was apparent after the delay. France\u2019s players refocused on the original game plan and returned to business as usual. For Iraq, the delay deflated the team\u2019s excitement and momentum.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the second straight game against a top team, Iraq committed an error in playing the ball out of the back with a shot goal kick. Against Norway with the score 1-1, Iraqi goalkeeper Jalal Hassan played the ball out wide to defender Zaid Tahseen, who then played the ball back to Hassan with Erling Haaland running down on him. It ended with a goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Against France, Iraq made a goalkeeper change and went with Ahmed Basil Fadhil. But the same mistake happened as he passed it to Tahseen, who again hit a poor pass back to the keeper. This resulted in a Mbapp\u00e9 goal that put France up 2-0 and squandered any chance of an Iraq comeback.\u00a0<\/p>\n Playing out of the back is a risky strategy, but it becomes almost reckless when a team is not nearly as talented as its opponent. Arnold deserves a lot of blame for having this mistake happen twice on such a big stage. His team should have respected the talent of Norway and France and played it much safer. His teams would have been much better off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY France scored early, played through driving rain in Philadelphia, sat through a long weather delay, and simply controlled its game against Iraq for all 90 minutes. Iraq at times has played well but has now lost its first two games at the tournament as it has made continuous mistakes \u2013 first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}