France find a way past Paraguay and what awaits England in Mexico? - World Cup Daily

0:00Philippe Auclair:This is The Guardian.

0:30whistle, Matthias Galazza could have had eight on his own. France kept their cool just about, Mbappe laughing his way through it. Ultimately, probably good for football that France made it through. Meanwhile, Morocco looked second best for a lot of the game against Canada, but when it mattered, they took their chances brilliantly and will probably offer a sterner test for France in the next round. We've all climbed a hill so we can give you deep, personal and scientific insights into how England will fare at altitude against Mexico. Happy 4th of July, everyone. This is the Guardian Football Weekly.

1:01On the panel today with me in LA, Barry Glendening. Welcome. Hello, Max. Hello, Archie Rintut. Hey, Max. And just landed in Mexico City. Hey, Barney, how are you? I'm fine, thanks.

1:10Barney Ronay:I managed to survive an incredible electrical storm on the way to my hotel. So it's simply being alive at this point feels like a bonus. Has it made you uh treat every second differently would you say yeah i decided that from now on everything has to be special perfect i'm just going to suck the sweetness out of life which is why i'm i'm here yeah of course what better way to begin uh your the all new party ronay all right let's talk about uh france's win over paraguay first and before i get the panel thoughts i caught up with philippe au clair at full time so okay philippe uh one nil then an Mbappe penalty, the difference.

1:47It was Paraguay's first and only foul of the game. I'm surprised you're not covered in blood, if I'm honest. How was it for you?

2:03Philippe Auclair:Oh, I think we could just keep it at that, just laugh. I've rarely seen anything like this. I honestly I don't know I don't know what to say I'd like to know what the instructions given by Alfaro to his players were you know instead you know we think of managers you know on the training pitch I don't know they rehearse free kicks and corner kicks and transitions and playing 10 v 11 and they must have like special courses like this is how you fall when a player is within two inches of you and you pretend to have been hit in the head. Or this is how you give an elbow to a player. And this is the way you have to do it, the angle you've got to take, so the referee doesn't take you, doesn't see you.

2:56Philippe Auclair:But it's strange, Max. I was absolutely zen-like throughout the whole game. I was just laughing because I couldn't believe what I was saying. This is a shithousery of that level. It's absolutely sensational. But the thing is that the French didn't lose their temper and there was only one. I mean, the way that three-flinch players were booked and no Paraguayan player was booked. You kicked them off the park, Philippe. Yeah, that's what happened. You booted them off the park. It does make you think what the Uzbek League is like with that ref. I know they've been given instructions to let things go, but I thought Paraguay and I'll get into it the lads were an embarrassment on that pitch today yeah they were they were they were embarrassing because they're actually far better footballers than that they obviously thought they had no chance and that the only way they could possibly get something out of this game was to get a French player sent off to foul whenever possible to work the referee who was he was so bad.

4:07Philippe Auclair:The ref was so bad. It was embarrassing. It was an embarrassment, but there was... In a way, there is nothing to show for this game because you think that's a game to get into the quarters of the World Cup. This is probably an opportunity that very few of those Paraguayan players will ever have again in their career. And then they decide to do this with it. That's that's shocking and from the French side I think the positives are like there are no injuries obvious injuries nobody got a red card Dwayne was very good when he came on and you know the penalty which was a penalty for once was he got it because he's he's a super player Lucadini I thought was terrific at left back which I think would probably reassure a little bit other than that it was a game for nothing.

5:07Philippe Auclair:I don't know if it felt that way. I didn't feel engaged in that game that I've been in other games in those knockout rounds because I felt, yeah, France is controlling. No, of course, they're not creating an awful lot, but they will create something at some point. That's fine. And it's just a matter of not being totally stupid and they were not stupid. They controlled that. I think Kylian Mbappe's reactions throughout the whole game, which is basically, I think he spent And the last 45 minutes, just laughing at people, just laughing at them saying, guys, you can't be serious. You really can't be serious.

5:44Philippe Auclair:But, you know, justice was done. And I don't think many people will miss Paraguay, to be honest. It's funny because I love shithouse you, but it gets to a level where you're like, come on, this is ridiculous. I mean, because it could have got dangerous, I think, for the French players. I suppose the only question is, is it a concern? This is the first time that you haven't seen France create buckets. You know, okay, they didn't score until just on halftime against Sweden, but they could have been 10-0 up. Apart from, you know, Hill made that great double save from Mbappe, he made a couple of other decent saves, he didn't really create much.

6:17Does that bother you at all?

6:19Philippe Auclair:No, not really, because I think that when you think that the temperature on the pitch was 37-38, feeling like 40-41. Obviously, this is going to have a big impact on the way the players in the transition. It's going to have a big impact as well. I mean, to be honest, Paraguay, for all the shithousery, as teams playing with a low block are concerned, are as well organized as anybody else. So it was going to be very, very tough to break them down. I think everybody would know that. But I don't feel concerned. I think it was a game for nothing, to be honest. It happened and it didn't happen in the same way.

7:07Philippe Auclair:And next one will be against Morocco, which I think there will be moments where you will want to watch that behind the sofa. I think it's going to be a pretty tough one. but Morocco is a team that plays quite proactive football so we're going to have a completely different game and you'll see again the French team that you've seen before but it also shows Max that the France we saw in the group phase was a France that wasn't playing against top teams basically and against Sweden that was the same Yeah. Senegal, yes, perhaps. And the first half against Senegal was not that great. Then it changed with Olysses coming in the middle, as we know.

7:54Philippe Auclair:Then the other group games, you know, Norway fielded the B team. Sweden afterwards was not defended. So we didn't really know. We still don't know how good or great this French team can be. What they did is that they did what they had to do. And in a way, it was damage limitation as well. because it could have gone bad very, very quickly. And it could have gone bad very, very badly. And it didn't happen. And I always felt they were in control. And I always felt that they had the possibility. It was not one of those where you're sitting at the edge of the seat saying they've got to score, they've got to score, something stupid is going to happen.

8:33Philippe Auclair:No, it didn't feel like that at all. But honestly, I just have to laugh. I've rarely seen anything like this. It's really taking the piss. You're on for the full pod after the Morocco game, so we will chat to you then. But merci beaucoup, au revoir, felicitations. Bonne nuit à toi, Max. Philippe Oclair, they're laughing his way through. What was, I mean, Barry, the BBC called Paraguay stubborn, which feels generous to me.

9:03Max Rushden:Yes, they are a very obdurate team. Well, to be fair, there was a lot of pearl clutching on the BBC after the game. Joe Hart in particular I love Joe Hart as a pundit but Joe Hart was particularly exercised by the Paraguayans' shithouse tactics and said he would hate to win that way and he would hate if any players on a team of his played that way and I suppose he has a point if everyone played like that no one would watch football but when one team plays like it and it's your stereotypical team of South American underdogs. It's kind of funny, for a while anyway. But yeah, they got away with murder from the Uzbekistan referee, Iljiz Tantashev, who somehow got through the game without booking any Paraguayan players.

10:02Max Rushden:I think he booked one of their coaching staff. And as you said in your intro, Galarza Matthias Galarza my god what an awful bastard it's just incredible but he was at everything and really he was really trying to wind up the French players and he did it up to a point he was then I think when he realised the jig was up towards the end of the game and Paraguay had stopped actually trying to pull a goal back in so much as they ever did try to score he was just focusing all his attention on getting Kylian Mbappe sent off, and Mbappe was having none of it, was just laughing in his face. But Michael Elisse was getting very wound up among other French players, but him in particular.

10:48Max Rushden:But the Paraguayans, they time-wasted, they fouled, they threw elbows, there was a couple of rugby-style palms off in the face of French players. They argued with the referee, they argued with their French players, they kicked, shins, they elbowed, just the whole gamut of shithousery. And while I commend their performances in getting this far, even though that game against Australia will live long in my memory for all the wrong reasons, I'm not sorry to see the back of them. No, that feels like enough. It did remind me, Barney, of Sunday league games I played in when they beat the living shit out of you.

11:32At the end of the game, they go, good battle, mate. but there will be no greater feeling for that than being in that dressing that french dressing

11:39Barney Ronay:room after you have beaten a team like that yeah i mean i guess so um i i saw them against germany in boston paraguay um and they are a good team you know they can play and i guess this was a decision how do you combat france's attack well there's one way um i i really like um i really like their manager i'm sad to see him leave the world cup gustavo alfaro there's been a kind of phenomenon this world cup last night i was at capa verde um in miami and um the wonderful bubista walked in at the end to talk about his players and there's this kind of serene gloomy man trope of these managers i mean alfaro is a 63 year old argentine he's managed everywhere and they talk in quite simple terms about being proud and dignity and being warriors and all this kind of stuff but they're kind of nice men and they they clearly love the game and they're kind of a nice antidote to um i would include don carlo and celotti in that as well sort of old old men who you wouldn't mind just sort of seeing next to at a bar or kind of you know being in a lift with because they just raise an eyebrow and they're kind of a nice antidote to the shoutiness of the rest of the World Cup.

12:55Barney Ronay:So I'm sad to see him go. And Bubista was fantastic. I love Bubista. And if Bubista's listening or watching and would like to be my dad... Archie, you made a good point with this. We are so conditioned to support the underdog. And at the start of the game, you're like, I hope Paraguay win. But they just got so filthy. I think it's the scuffing the penalty spot that just does my... Literally, when the penalty came in and every Paraguay player walked to the penalty spot and the ref was just like, go away. and another one would just walk up. You're never getting a yellow card out that you sort of eventually, you sort of think this would be a footballing crime if France didn't get through it.

13:33Do you remember the goodwill that Paraguay earned from the world when they beat Germany? Yeah. And everybody was thinking, wow, great for Paraguay. Look at them, they've got their own national holiday. I think that in France, that has been extinguished at least. And you mentioned the scraping of the penalty spot. I've seen Julio Enciso Scraping away the referees Vanishing foam during this game I showed you a clip from German TV Which they'd found where When Mike Maignon is trying to launch a quick A quick counter attack Suddenly from behind him Juan Caceres just falls on top of him And you can see that Caceres Has been walking fine before that And he's just absolutely Tanked it on top of him

14:16Barney Ronay:You don't find any of this funny at all oh it's hilarious maybe more obsessed with the rules it's seen as you know it's clever football's a game where you try to kind of dodge in and out of the rules slightly in some other football cultures I suppose the question is is does it get to a line where you might injure one of their players and I don't know if they it felt to me like not by scratching the penalty spot I don't know why that really pisses me off it just really pisses me off usually I enjoy shithousery as well I just felt that there was a line where it started to move into thuggery when when Galassa hits Mbappe there and you can say, oh, you know, but it's not hitting him in a point of the body where it's going to really hurt.

14:57But still, like, you are opening the door there and the referee doesn't do his job, which is to caution these players. And that's what leads to this continuation of that in the second half. I don't know. It just fell the wrong side of my humour lines for the most part. I mean, I ended up just laughing in disbelief by the end of the game. And I thought it was interesting that Didier Deschamps has said after the game that he was remembering when they won the World Cup in 2018 and how they had a game against Uruguay and he had to take off Kylian Mbappe. And he said that he asked two of the toughest players on the bench to protect him at the end of the game because he doesn't want to lose him to anything more.

15:39Kylian Mbappe was speaking about how, look, they thought that we were going to turn up here in tuxedos, but we showed that we could play dirty football too. It is a great victory for France because we've seen a completely different side of them at this tournament so far. And I think they're going to walk out of this game with a different kind of confidence to them now because they've shown that they can stand up for each other and not take the bait. I think it just gave me PTSD of playing Finchley away or Garchonians away or Hume away in Melbourne and just thinking I don't want to have my legs broken today but but um can I make an interesting

16:18Barney Ronay:comparison please in 86 England played Paraguay in Mexico and famously the guy who was marking Gary Lineker hit him so hard in the throat with his arm the Lineker couldn't speak for the rest of the half um and he actually made a he made a kind of call liniker afterwards said um i don't think he meant it i don't i don't want to think he didn't and it like obviously a terrible thing to do and that's no one should be doing that but england won 3-0 and it it kind of made me really like gary liniker and kind of admire he scored two goals in that game and england won and he he was very gentlemanly about that and i kind of thought it made me it ennobled the game and made me think that was kind of cool so maybe with the passing of time yeah we'll look back on this and

17:01Max Rushden:think it was yeah maybe i mean i think in this game at halftime we're all going paraguay well done you've frustrated them um i don't think did did france even have a shot on target in the first half and i think hill's first save was a kono shot from 25 yards i mean the second half right okay and you're going yeah you set out to frustrate and shake house and spoil and you've done exactly that and so well done because you're not as good at France you know everyone knows that it's the highest ranked team in the competition against the lowest ranked team left in the competition I think and then they go a goal down they continue this approach and they're getting dirtier and dirtier and they go a goal down and suddenly there's like 7 minutes left and they're not trying to score an equaliser it's as if They didn't quite, I know they scoffed at the penalty spot.

17:57Max Rushden:This is as if they hadn't realised, oh, we actually need to score a goal here. All their attention was just on winding up various French players. Yeah, and they did it, but not well enough. All right, that'll do for part one. Part two will do Morocco's win against Canada.

18:19Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly. So Morocco are through. They beat Canada 3-0. I'm actually not sure it was a 3-0 game what did you make of it? Canada were on top in the first half and that was the way they had to approach this game because if Morocco were to make a first a fast start and get ahead then I don't think Canada would have had a chance so the strategy call from Jesse Marsh made sense the problem was the problem for Canada at this tournament where they've not been able to take all their chances at the right time and there was that moment where Jonathan David had the chance to hit it when there was a great piece of build-up with Oluwasei and he just doesn't go for it and you see a certain fragility in Jonathan David's confidence still even though he had that hat-trick against Qatar he's just not quite making the right decisions at the right times for a striker where you just want to bank on your instinct and fair play to Morocco whilst they were overrun in the first half they only had one touch in the Canada box.

19:20They didn't panic. And these are the two sprintiest teams in the tournament left. So we shouldn't have been surprised by the intensity which there was. And even if Bono had to come to the rescue as well with one big save, let's not underestimate that they lost Ismail Saibari to a thigh injury. We've seen Mohamed Uwabi, the Morocco coach, say we're going to have a look in a few days. It seemed a slight injury, which they'll really hope for. But this was some adversity that Morocco had to come through and that they score a kind of goal where as a defending team you are furious that it's that easy to score but as the attacking team you look quite smart.

20:02It's a really lovely finish from Azzedine Unai and from there they didn't really relinquish control of the game. Yeah, the finishing was great for Morocco.

20:10Max Rushden:Yeah, because they didn't have many chances but the ones they did get they put away which is what Canada were unable to do and ultimately cost them. First goal, free kick, nicely worked set piece. Zerouani received a pass from Hakimi, I think it was, and just drilled this low shot through traffic into the bottom corner. And then the second two were brilliantly executed breakaway goals and they almost got another one, identical. By the time they were 3-0 up, I think they'd only had three shots on target and they scored all three of them. and that one obviously doesn't count as a shot on target despite what Troy Townsend would have you believe.

20:51After the game, Jesse Marsh said there was one team on the pitch. He said that of their start to the game at least. We were better than the number seven team in the world. I'd rather be us than them. I mean, I quite like Jesse Marsh, Barney. I think he's done well for Canada. It's their most successful men's World Cup campaign. They got their first point, their first win, their first group stage, progression first knockout victory. How do you feel about Jesse? Fair enough.

21:16Barney Ronay:He wants to be ballsy and kind of peppy in defeat, but it seems pretty graceless to me. Why would you say that? I think the right thing to do is to congratulate your opponent. But Morocco are a really good team. I quite want them to win the World Cup. I think they'll give France a really good game. They're kind of a fascinating team. I mean, they have so many players who've come through Ajax, through the French football machine, through Belgium as well, you know, who are Moroccans. And you can sort of call that a diaspora team if you want, but it's not, you know, there's a reason why there are Moroccan people in those countries, and it's not because Morocco has chosen that to happen to them.

21:57Barney Ronay:I like the way this World Cup is kind of piecing nations back together like a jigsaw in that way and telling you stories about them. And that's quite an American thing in a country of immigrants and people who've moved around the place. I think they're really, I would think it would be such an interesting thing if Morocco to actually win the World Cup, which I really don't think is impossible. It's not impossible. I think that would be really fascinating and really hard for Donald Trump to kind of compute as well, which I'd quite enjoy. This is definitely not in his kind of, well, I think he has a script, does he?

22:30Barney Ronay:But it's definitely not in his kind of fevered dreams. Yeah, I think they're really good. And I'd rather be them, I think, than Canada. Sure. That's an interesting point. I thought this was actually, especially their first half, was actually their least impressive performance so far. Possibly. I mean, Canada have a brilliant pressing system. They're a really well-drilled team. They've done really well. He's managed them really well. They've really competed really well at this World Cup. They're really disciplined and they're really well coached. And he maybe showed a way to play against possession teams like that if you're willing to really press like that.

23:06Barney Ronay:And that was good. But they still won 3-0. and you know they are I guess champions of Africa if we want to say that although I'm not really sure why that one ended up that if you can win 3-0 when a team has kind of slightly tactically got to you I think you're doing okay and they'll feel pretty good about it I think. The main thing for Jesse Marsh is that his players believe him and his players buy into it but it's difficult on the outside to buy into everything he says for example yesterday Max in an interview he was talking about the U.S. men's national team job where he said people like to say oh he wishes he coached the national team let me make it really clear I will never coach the U.S.

23:50national team ever and that's no problem there was the possibility of me at one point but I'm done with it I don't even care anymore do you believe him I don't know I mean he may never

24:02Max Rushden:coached the US men's national team but I'm not sure it will be his decision he said after this game I'd rather be us than them, I'd rather be Canada than Morocco and he's getting pelters with this but he seems to be very unpopular in the United States that's the vibe I'm getting and someone admittedly he was just some bloke in a bar was telling me but you know absolutely that's journalism I've picked up some of my... Yeah, they're your sources. Yeah. Some bloke in a bar said that he really wanted the US job. He didn't get it. And now he more or less took the Canada job as a bit of an FU to the States.

24:47Max Rushden:And I think his comment, I'd rather be us than them, has been misconstrued. I don't think he was saying Canada were better than Morocco because we clearly weren't. They lost 3-0 and it could have been worse. I think he was just, I prefer our team's spirit, I prefer my players, and I prefer the vibe we have in our camp. And, you know, say if Arsenal went out and hammered Sunderland in a match, I would still rather be a Sunderland fan than an Arsenal fan. I'd add to what Barry's saying that this is not to take away from the job that Jesse Marsh has done. When you consider that Alphonso Davies has missed basically the entirety of this tournament, I think if you told Canadians that four years ago, that they'd have to go through this home tournament without him.