Dream goals and luck in misfortune
Merciless French steal the record from the DFB team
November 19, 2023, 11:59 a.m
It’s a memorable evening in Nice. The French national football team wins with a historic result, with dream goals and superlatives. The victims of the furor are the footballers from Gibraltar. But there is also a small mood dampener.
France’s merciless football stars enjoyed the historic evening in Nice, but the intoxicated ensemble around Kylian Mbappé had no mercy for their opponents. For a reason. “We want the record with the highest victory,” said Mbappé: “We wanted to make history and do it as a collective. There is nothing more beautiful.” The victims of the French scoring frenzy were the national team of Gibraltar, 198th in the FIFA world rankings between East Timor (197th) and the Bahamas (199th). In the end it was 14-0 in Nice. Never before had a team won more in a qualifying game for a European Championship or World Cup.
“We said in preparation: There are two options. We win and play well. Or we win and play very well,” said coach Didier Deschamps. The result besides the result: great goals, like the overhead kick from veteran striker Olivier Giroud as the crowning finale in stoppage time, with which France replaced the German national team with their record victory from September 2006 in the European Championship qualification in San Marino. The DFB team won 13-0.
No laissez-faire, no quarter
Or a shot from 42 meters from Mbappé. The 24-year-old scored a total of three times and now has 300 competitive goals in his still young career. Neither Argentina’s world champion Lionel Messi (36), nor Portugal’s goal giant and superstar Cristiano Ronaldo (38) or Brazil’s Neymar (31) could do that at this age. France had long since qualified for the European Championships in Germany next year. So they could have been a bit laissez-faire after an own goal of all things had already started the goal festival in the third minute.
Ex-Bundesliga professional Marcus Thuram made it 2-0 in the fourth minute and in the 16th minute, Warren Zaïre-Emery, aged 17 years, eight months and ten days, became the youngest French debutant in almost 110 years to score let celebrate. However, the joy was marred by an injury to the teenager after a foul – the visiting player was shown a red card. “His ankle is extremely swollen, but it’s not broken. Everything could have been much worse,” said Deschamps after the game and gave the all-clear: “I hope that he will recover quickly.”
Against the norm of modern football
“This is a result that does not correspond to the norm of modern football,” wrote France’s sports newspaper “L’Équipe” after the 14-0 win: “When everything is so easy, it always ends with the players getting a little bored and think about other things like vacation, taxes, Champions League.” “Les Bleus” didn’t want to miss this opportunity, according to “Sud Ouest”. The players asked him at halftime where the record stood, Deschamps said after the game. The team was “relentless,” said L’Équipe. And former French international Alain Giresse raved about a “homage to football.”
France’s selection, world champions in 1998 and 2018 and runner-up most recently in Qatar, European champions in 1984 and 2000, won 10-0 against Azerbaijan in the European Championship qualification in September 1995. Since Saturday there has been a different record in the lists. “A perfect evening,” said Bayern professional Kingsley Coman, to whom he contributed two goals.