Euro 2024: Kolo Muani sends France to the quarter-finals

The road continues for the French team in Euro 2024. It perhaps does not bode well for anything fantastic, but on Monday, against a Belgium which had refused to play, it came out at the end match to win 1-0. It was Randal Kolo Muani who found the fault, deceiving Casteels with a shot deflected by Vertonghen in the 85th minute of play. The Blues are therefore in the quarter-finals, and they will face Portugal or Slovenia thanks to this liberating goal .

It was for France, already, who therefore waited until their fourth match of the tournament to finally score a goal of their own in open play (even if there was this unfortunate deflection by Vertonghen). But also and above all for the neutral spectators. Because on Monday, in Düsseldorf, the boredom was heavy. And the fault lies with both teams.

We can criticize Belgium for many things: their technical level, the poverty of ambitions, the desire to give no rhythm to the game and the essentially reactive approach. This will be legitimate, especially for a selection which complained enough about the restrictive play of the France team in 2018, when the latter beat the Red Devils in the semi-final of the Russian World Cup. But we should especially not lose sight of the fact that Domenico Tedesco’s entire project was intended to embarrass the Blues in the most total way. There was no shortage of it, until the 85th minute.

France had to have the ball in this round of 16, had to think about its offensive moves, and perhaps there, the limits of Didier Deschamps’ ideas were a little too revealed. Once again, in this Euro, we saw a French selection incapable of developing a collective animation carried forward. There, the 55-year-old coach had chosen to place Antoine Griezmann on the right wing of the French 4-3-3, but it would have been difficult to have a less productive idea than this one. It gave absolutely nothing, even if we must not lose sight of the fact that the impact of Kylian Mbappé on the left side was frankly not more convincing. Even if, at times, the excesses of the captain of the Blues could create a little panic in the Belgian defense.

In this match configuration, Belgium mainly sought to shine in depth, and despite a few warnings, notably with Carrasco’s shots blocked by defenders (27th, 61st), they had difficulty in showing themselves to be dangerous except for this twenty-metre attempt by Kevin de Bruyne pushed back by Maignan, shortly before Kolo Muani’s goal.

Before that, France, for its part, will always be able to remember Thuram’s header that narrowly missed the target after a cross from Koundé (34th), Casteels’ save on Tchouameni’s try (49th) or this poorly taken shot from Mbappe, also on a back cross from Koundé (56th). And it is because it – in fact – dominated this match that it can at least say that it deserved such an outcome. Even if there is nothing to brag about.

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