<\/p>\n
Reading FC academy graduate Michael Olise put in another brilliant performance to help France reach the Quarter-Finals of the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Kylian Mbappe\u2019s penalty booked France\u2019s spot in the quarter-finals as they edged a 1-0 win over Paraguay in a bad-tempered Philadelphia contest.<\/p>\n
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Les Bleus controlled the first half but struggled to break through the Paraguay defence in a last-16 contest played out in sweltering conditions, with temperatures hitting around 38C.<\/p>\n
Mbappe broke the deadlock from the penalty spot in the 70th minute, his seventh goal of the tournament moving him level with Lionel Messi in the Golden Boot standings.<\/p>\n
The France skipper\u2019s spot-kick set up a last-eight clash with Morocco, who beat Canada earlier on Saturday.<\/p>\n
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Mbappe had an early attempt booted away by Omar Alderete and Michael Olise\u2019s intended cross for Adrien Rabiot was cleared as France looked to strike in the opening minutes.<\/p>\n
Les Bleus moved the ball well around the Paraguay box and dominated possession, but struggled to find the target against a side whose defending was both resolute and regularly cynical.<\/p>\n
Manu Kone hit an effort wide and after the hydration break, Ousmane Dembele\u2019s low cross almost caused problems when it took a deflection and trickled across the face of goal before being cleared.<\/p>\n
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Rabiot fired over the crossbar from distance while, at the opposite end, Mike Maignan made a comfortable save from a free-kick.<\/p>\n
Mbappe headed wide from Dembele\u2019s corner and Orlando Gill made a solid punch from Olise\u2019s corner delivery as France continued to be frustrated.<\/p>\n
After the break, Miguel Almiron\u2019s corner was punched away by Maignan before France enjoyed a succession of chances.<\/p>\n
Dembele fired into the side of goal from a quickly-taken corner and Gill made a great save to tip Kone\u2019s strike over the bar.<\/p>\n
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France were awarded the penalty following a VAR check after Diego Gomez fouled Desire Doue, who had whizzed into the box.<\/p>\n
Mbappe stepped up to the spot and coolly slotted the ball into the bottom corner to send France ahead in the 70th minute.<\/p>\n
Paraguay sent a free-kick into the area in an attempt to find an equaliser, but Maignan collected easily and Junior Alonso skewed an effort wide of the upright.<\/p>\n
Mbappe looked to wrap up the game in the final 10 minutes as he forced Gill to push away a powerful shot before Maignan made a low stop from Mauricio at the other end.<\/p>\n
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Gill made a brilliant double save to deny Mbappe in stoppage-time as France secured their place in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
France coach Didier Deschamps said: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy. If we\u2019d taken one of our chances late in the game, it would have been a much more comfortable finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cParaguay use every trick in the book. It\u2019s not necessarily the kind of football people enjoy watching, but we stayed focused and that\u2019s not easy to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reading FC academy graduate Michael Olise put in another brilliant performance to help France reach the Quarter-Finals of the World Cup. Kylian Mbappe\u2019s penalty booked France\u2019s spot in the quarter-finals as they edged a 1-0 win over Paraguay in a bad-tempered Philadelphia contest. Advertisement Les Bleus controlled the first half but struggled to break through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2491695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[490685,393906,22762,23919,490692,362171,490693,360668,490684,490687,340083,490691,490689,490690,485764,490686,490688],"class_list":["post-2491694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-adrien-rabiot","tag-brilliant-performance","tag-canada","tag-france","tag-junior-alonso","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-les-bleus","tag-lionel-messi","tag-michael-olise","tag-mike-maignan","tag-morocco","tag-omar-alderete","tag-orlando-gill","tag-ousmane-dembele","tag-paraguay","tag-penalty-spot","tag-quarter-finals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Royals-academy-graduate-Olise-stars-again-as-France-reach-World.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2491694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2491696,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2491694\/revisions\/2491696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2491695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2491694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2491694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2491694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}