Франц дөрвөн довтлогчтой тактикаар Марокког буулган авлаа

Creating a World Cup-winning side is all about balance. As a disciplined defensive midfielder who won the tournament in 1998, and as a cautious manager who won the tournament in 2018, Didier Deschamps knows this better than most. This time around, his France team feel more attack-minded than usual. And yet, ominously, France’s defensive record remains excellent.

It’s not simply that France have yet to concede a goal in the knockout stage of this tournament, recording clean sheets against Sweden, Paraguay and Morocco. The real story is that they’ve barely even allowed any half-chances. Sweden looked meek when recording just 0.7xG in their round of 32 match, but that’s more than Paraguay and Morocco have managed between them: 0.2xG and 0.1xG respectively. Here, Morocco only had a sight of goal from set-pieces or hopeful long-range shots.

This is despite the fact that Deschamps is continuing to use four attackers, a departure from his previous approach at World Cups, when he often favoured more of a responsible central midfielder shifted out wide to help screen the defence. Moreover, neither Adrien Rabiot nor Manu Kone are world-renowned holding players: Rabiot is more of an all-rounder, Kone a unheralded operator in his first international tournament. But they’ve been excellent together, patrolling the centre of the pitch as a tight. duo, and they are being trusted to cover the width of the pitch — sometimes without huge support from ahead. But France are making it work, in part because of their boldness in attack.

France’s main task here was coping with Achraf Hakimi, the best right-back in the tournament and familiar to the France players who play their club football with PSG. Hakimi has sometimes seemed like a right-back, a No 10 and a No 9 combined at points in this tournament, and here he carried Morocco’s main attacking threat, sometimes operating as their most advanced player.

France, in general, seemed happy for him to push forward, knowing that he would leave space to break into. That’s not quite what they would have done at previous tournaments — in 2018, box-to-box midfielder Blaise Matuidi played on the left and would have been practically man-marking an attacking full-back like Hakimi. But here, Desire Doue played a little deeper than usual, while Kylian Mbappe drifted over to that side, always ready to break. France’s passing network shows the extent to which Mbappe took up inside-left positions.

Midway through the first half, there was the perfect example — Hakimi pushed forward and was tackled by Doue. He was out of the game.

This was France’s dream scenario, and they broke quickly. Mbappe drifted left, sprinted in behind to get on a pass from Michael Olise…

..and was clumsily brought down inside the box by Noussair Mazraoui. Mbappe then had the subsequent penalty saved, after a long wait.

France eventually went ahead 10 minutes into the second half with a classic Mbappe curler. It came after a good example of another element of the game France do excellently: counter-pressing. While the conditions at World Cup 2026 means that constant pressing high up the pitch is physically tough, various top teams have been excellent at pouncing to regain the ball quickly after it’s been lost.

For their opening goal, France effectively won possession in those situations three times within the space of 20 seconds — and as much as this period was scrappy, it showed how France’s attackers were simultaneously denying counter-attacking chances, and creating chances of their own. Their defensive work isn’t about shielding the defence, it’s more about being proactive — Morocco were trying to launch a break here, but Rabiot stepped in to intercept and put France on the attack shortly before Mbappe curled home.

At 1-0, there was another incident where Hakimi got caught high up the pitch acting as a right-winger, while a France player — this time William Saliba — jumped in to make an interception. Mbappe was free to break into the space Hakimi had vacataed, and a Morocco centre-back — this time Issa Diop — flew into a tackle to bring him down.

This was different to the Mazraoui penalty concession, in that it was a deliberate foul to halt a counter-attack. But it was the same pattern. Often, a team’s strength is also their weakness, and that was very much the case for Morocco and Hakimi here.

The second goal came from a rare example of France attacking through the middle. The instigator was again Mbappe, who played a simple pass to Ousemane Dembele — coming off the right flank — to record an assist, but more crucially made a sudden burst which occupied both Morocco centre-backs and allowed Dembele the freedom to cut onto his right foot and squeeze a shot under Bounou to put the game out of Morocco’s reach.

You can argue that France haven’t been seriously tested yet — or, at least, not since their 3-1 win over Senegal in their opening fixture. A probable meeting with Spain in the semi-final will be a different challenge entirely. But to play two knockout matches without conceding even a sniff of a chance is hugely impressive — especially considering Deschamps hasn’t compromised on his unusually daring approach of using four proper attackers.