World CupFrance Knocks England Out of the World Cup After Harry Kane’s Missed Penalty
The defending champs advanced to the semifinals after narrowly escaping what would have been a tying goal by England’s captain.
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AL KHOR, Qatar — For England, it ended as it always does, as it always seems like it must: with a penalty missed or an opportunity wasted, a fallen hero holding his head in his hands, replaying that moment, the one when it all fell apart, over and over in his mind, wanting nothing more than a chance to rewind, to do it all again, to make it right.
There will, in the days to come, be plenty of recrimination as England picks over the bones of its 2-1 defeat to France on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, as it comes to terms with another exit, another disappointment, another few years of hurt. It is, or at least it has become, a natural part of the cycle, a chance for catharsis, collective therapy or just some good, old-fashioned bloodletting, depending on the circumstances.
A little of that will find its way, inexorably, to Harry Kane, the team’s captain, the most prolific goal-scorer in his country’s history, and inevitably, then, the player who missed the penalty that might have taken the game to extra time, that might have kept England in Qatar for a little longer.
He will not be alone. Gareth Southgate, the manager, will attract his share of criticism, too, as the country’s most successful manager for half a century weighs whether he has the “energy” to continue into a fourth major tournament, to do it all again. Much of it, though, will be directed at Wilton Sampaio, the Brazilian referee, a man who achieved the rare feat of becoming England’s anointed villain despite awarding Southgate’s team two penalties.
The principal accusation centered on France’s first goal, a whistling, fizzing laser of a shot from the midfielder Aurélien Tchouámeni that capped a move England very clearly felt started with a foul on Bukayo Saka. Sampaio waved away the protestations; his video assistants did not see enough of an error to intercede.
There were, however, other apparent offenses: a penalty claim from Kane, in particular, which was certainly a foul but was not, on more detailed review, actually in the penalty area; a succession of hairsplitting free kicks awarded against England; an array of French transgressions that seemed to pass by unnoticed. With each one, England’s fury and frustration mounted, Southgate and his staff growing more and more agitated on the sideline.
Once the critiques have subsided, though, once culpability has been assigned and internalized, another emotion will come to the fore. More than anything, England will look back on this game with regret.
Over the last three weeks, France — and France alone — has seemed to be on cruise control in Qatar. Argentina’s campaign has been conducted exclusively on a fraught, emotional knife-edge. Brazil seemed somehow giddy right up until the point that it was dumped out by an obdurate, unyielding Croatia.
Portugal faced the existential angst of dropping Cristiano Ronaldo. Morocco has been backed by a gathering swell of pride from across Africa and the Middle East. The Dutch faced no little domestic opprobrium for their uncharacteristic conservatism. Even England, largely unflustered during its stay, teetered a little after enduring the apparently unbearable indignity of drawing with the United States.
France’s progress, by contrast, had been ominously serene: two straightforward wins in the group phase, a defeat against Tunisia that nobody seemed to notice — at least in part because French television cut away after what appeared to be a late equalizer, neglecting to show the audience that it was subsequently ruled out — and then a breezy victory against Poland in the round of 16.
Against England, though, that sang-froid almost proved France’s undoing. Tchouámeni’s goal seemed to lull his team into a torpor. Gradually, it stripped any urgency from its play, any impetus, as if expecting England simply to succumb. The reigning champion, France ceded first territory and then control. It sat back, rested on its laurels, rode its luck. Eventually, it was made to pay: Tchouámeni tripping Saka, Kane sending the subsequent penalty past his opposing captain and Tottenham teammate, Hugo Lloris.
At that point, the wind seemed to be at England’s backs. France’s vaunted attacking line, spearheaded by Mbappé, had been peripheral to the game; its midfield was being overwhelmed; Deschamps seemed curiously reluctant to try to wrestle back control.
That was England’s chance: not just to prove, as Southgate said, that it could “go toe to toe” with an elite team, a champion team, but to beat one; to claim a place not just in a third straight tournament semifinal, but to set up a meeting with Morocco, spirited and inspired but an indisputable underdog; to glimpse a path to the World Cup final, open and inviting, at its feet.
That it did not take it will haunt Kane, Southgate and the rest of his players for some time. France mustered no more than a few seconds of menace — Olivier Giroud denied by Jordan Pickford, the subsequent corner worked out to Antoine Griezmann, a flashing, perilous cross, Giroud offering no second chances — to seize the lead once more. England, by contrast, was not nearly as unforgiving.
There was nobody, Southgate said, who he would rather entrust with a penalty than Kane. “He’s the best,” he said. “He’s the best,” he said again, as if for emphasis. Kane could not, though, deliver again, not this time. The psychology was complex, he suggested, the pressure intense. “It was a second penalty,” Southgate said. “Against a goalkeeper who knows you well.”
Kane’s effort sailed over the bar, England’s hopes for another four years disappearing off into the night. He bit his jersey, held his head in his hands. Lloris punched the air in delight, his teammates flooding to him to congratulate him, presumably for signing for Tottenham a decade ago just so that he could scramble Kane’s thought processes in the Gulf a decade later.
France remains on course to become the first team since Brazil, back in 1962, to retain the World Cup title. It has had the air, throughout this tournament, of a team that suspects it knows how all of this ends.
It is that, for England, which will make the pain even sharper: that for the first time, here, as it stared down the world champion and found nothing to fear, it had dared to believe things might be different.
Reporting from London
The sharp sting of disappointment emptied the pubs fast in Kentish Town, a neighborhood of North London. “Broken,” said Jake Arndt, 18, standing outside and searching for words. “Empty.”
Reporting from Qatar
FULL TIME: France 2, England 1. The French return to the semifinals with a sudden burst of energy in the second half and with the help of a missed penalty by Harry Kane. He’ll hear about that for a bit.
Reporting from Qatar
France will face Morocco in Wednesday’s second semifinal. The winner of that will meet the Croatia-Argentina winner in the World Cup final on Dec. 18. Almost there now ….
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Rashford curls it, it hits the hit …. but on top. The air goes out of the place, and the clock runs out on England.
Reporting from Qatar
90′ +8 Is this it for England? Rashford wins a free kick in an extremely dangerous place, just outside the D at the top of the penalty area, a little to the left. He and Mount have a loooong talk, but Rashford will take.
Reporting from Qatar
90′ +6 Stones is down holding his foot, and he’s not getting up. Given England’s predicament, that means he’s really hurt himself here, which is bad news for England and potentially worse news for Manchester City.
Reporting from Qatar
Grealish on for Stones, but it’s a bit late for him to offer much.
Reporting from Qatar
90′ +5 France just hacking balls up the field now. England just bringing them right back.
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90′ +1 England wins a corner off Lloris’s fingertips, France clears, England recycles, we start again ….
Reporting from Qatar
90′ Eight minutes of injury time. Eight minutes for France to kill off. Eight minutes for England to save its World Cup.
Reporting from Qatar
90′ Yellow card for Maguire, for an elbow to the back of Griezmann’s head. He’ll take one for the team, though, and for the minute it’ll burn.
Reporting from Qatar
89′ England’s Mount gets a bit of space and a good look at goal and send his shot about 25 rows deep.
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Wilton Sampaio is going to have a rough couple of days, whether England gets out of this or not. An England exit requires a villain, and he’s the leading candidate at this point.
Reporting from Qatar
85′ Marcus Rashford on for Foden. England’s chase is on, and the clock is ticking.
Reporting from Qatar
84′ Kane skies the penalty over the bar! France holds its lead, and releases its breath.
Reporting from Qatar
From a player of Harry Kane’s quality, and his composure, that is an extraordinarily bad penalty.
Reporting from Qatar
Kane and Lloris are longtime teammates at Tottenham Hotspur, of course, and you have to wonder if Kane, having taken his best shot on the earlier penalty, got in his own head a bit there. It was at least a yard over the bar.
Another look at Harry Kane's missed penalty pic.twitter.com/84Nvg27JcL
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 10, 2022
Reporting from Qatar
82′ A penalty appeal for England, a peek at V.A.R. rewind and a ... penalty for England!
Reporting from Qatar
Theo Hernández absolutely ran down Mount in the area, and it didn’t take a long look for Sampaio to confirm the penalty.
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A flurry of subs after the goal: Sterling and Mount for England replacing Saka and Henderson, and Kingsley Coman for Dembélé.
Reporting from Qatar
France had played well for roughly one minute of the last hour or so before that goal came. Giroud had forced Jordan Pickford into a save just a few seconds before. That was the warning; England, caught out by a laser of a cross from Griezmann, did not heed it. England has been the better team here, but it has about 15 minutes to find a goal or it’s going out of the World Cup.
OLIVIER. GIROUD. 🇫🇷
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 10, 2022
Another look at the go ahead goal for France ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TunsJVbrPc
Reporting from Qatar
78′ GOAL! France leads, 2-1. It's Giroud.
Reporting from Qatar
Denied only a moment ago, Giroud beats Maguire to a header at the near post and France, against the run of play, is ahead.
Reporting from Qatar
77′ Pickford pushes away a Giroud stab from close range and barely — just barely — keeps it tied.
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72′ Hernández arrives juusssssst in the nick of time to keep a cross from Foden off Saka’s toe. France looks to be in a bit of trouble here.
LONDON — For many England fans, the experience of supporting the team is of wild swings between hope and despair. But mainly despair.
The team hasn’t won the tournament since 1966 but has come agonizingly close several times. “Trauma is embedded,” said Rob Dutfield, 31, who watched the game at The Assembly House pub in Camden, a neighborhood of London.
For others, the memories of specific defeats are long lasting.
For Louis Auld, 27, watching the game at a pub in Kentish Town, North London, it was the defeat against Brazil in 2002 that hurt the most. He had watched the game in elementary school.
Ben Holden, 27, said the semi final defeat against Croatia four years ago “hit me the hardest.”
At The Approach, the heaving pub where the two men watched the game, fans cheered and groaned through every tackle and shot, and when Harry Kane equalized early in the second half it exploded with joy. People sang the team’s unofficial anthem: “Football’s coming home.”
The song was composed in another year of international football, 1996. Back then, the trophy nearly came back to England. But not quite.
Reporting from Qatar
70′ Harry Maguire was a whisker — and a Hugo Lloris fingertip, regardless of what the referee says — away from giving England the lead.
Reporting from Qatar
The Venn diagram of people who had a late Harry Maguire winner and people who are lying is a circle.
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France needs something to change, and fast. Other than a brief flurry after the goal, the world champion has asked England precious few questions, while both Saka and Foden are starting to prove a real menace at the other end. Both Ousmane Dembélé and Olivier Giroud have been passengers, but Didier Deschamps does not have a vast assortment of alternatives. Kingsley Coman is the most obvious change, but it may be that he looks to Eduardo Camavinga to try to reassert a bit of control in the middle.
Reporting from Qatar
66′ With Saka down at midfield — briefly — it looks like the coaches are in a bit of a staredown substitution-wise. But they don’t have great options: France’s injury issues mean Deschamps would be taking off any player for a lesser (if fresher) options. For Southgate, the options are better — Rashford, Grealish, Raheem Sterling, Mason Mount — but any change either robs them of Henderson, and weakens their defensive shape and cover, or merely trades tiring legs for fresh.
Reporting from Qatar
56′ That goal should bring this game to life quite nicely, or condemn us all to the kind of turgid play France has offered the last 20 minutes. At first glance, we may be in for the former: Mbappé scorches Walker down the right and centers, but Dembélé’s touch is too hard and he has to dribble out.
Reporting from Qatar
Kyle Walker, it should be noted, is not a slow man. He is quite fast in fact. And Mbappé made him look like he was running in work boots.
Reporting from Qatar
54′ Mbappé tries to ice Kane a bit by walking in to Lloris for a pep talk before he takes the kick. Now Kane, standing over it, decides he wants his own reset and walks over to pick up the ball.
GOAL! France 1, England 1. Kane buries the penalty in the left-side netting.
Reporting from Qatar
That Kane goal is England’s reward for the first five minutes of this half, and probably a substantial part of the first period, too. It has played with far more zip and purpose than France ever since going behind. No surprise that it was Saka who drew the penalty, either, given how lively he’s been. France has looked dangerously tepid for quite a long time now, and that’s rarely a good sign. Once that momentum goes, it can be hard to get it back.
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52′ Penalty to England!
Reporting from Qatar
46′ A quick yellow for Dembélé, for hauling down Bellingham in the buildup to England’s attack, The referee let the play continue, then went for the receipts. England turns the resulting free kick into a shot, and a corner.
Reporting from Qatar
Lloris did a nice job pushing that Bellingham shot over the bar for a corner, by the way. It was headed in under the bar.
Reporting from Qatar
46′ Back underway, with no changes for either team. England may have to change … something soon, however.
Reporting from Qatar
Having seen the two controversial decisions of the first half properly, England has good cause to feel that there was a foul on Bukayo Saka in the build-up to the goal. The penalty appeal from Kane, though, was wrong: it was a foul, but the contact came outside the area. But who knows: maybe England would have scored from the resultant free-kick.
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Resetting if you have been asleep for 36 hours: This game will complete the semifinals, which will begin Tuesday with Croatia vs. Argentina (2 p.m. Eastern), and then continue Wednesday with Morocco vs. France/England (2 p.m. Eastern). Trust those kickoff times, not what you see on TV.
France has the lead, but there is plenty in that half to encourage England. Harry Kane has had two genuinely good chances, both of them the consequence of lackadaisical French defending, and Bukayo Saka has been a reasonably regular thorn in the French side. Just as impressively, England has locked France out on the counter-punch impressively, with Kylian Mbappé essentially a peripheral figure in the game after a bright opening ten minutes or so.
The problem, of course, is that Mbappé being quiet is both a positive and a negative — positive because he hasn’t hurt you yet, negative because that means it’s still to come — but as things stand there’s no reason for Southgate to feel his team can’t get back into this.
Reporting from Qatar
HALFTIME: France 1, England 0, Atmosphere -12. Tchouaméni’s goal is the difference.
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45′ + 2 Theo Hernández goes down in a heap after appearing to roll his ankle in a collision with Bellingham. That’s effectively the last action of the half.
Reporting from Qatar
43′ The first yellow of the night goes to Griezmann, who has absolutely earned it for sheer consistency of fouling if nothing else.
Reporting from Qatar
40′ The only thing dragging this game forward is the occasional shot, but it’s now so quiet in here you can hear the players talking from our seats up here in the balcony of the International Space Station.
Reporting from Qatar
Please add “first-choice tactical fouler” to Griezmann’s list of tasks for the evening. If there’s an England attack that can be stopped at the source by clipping someone’s ankles, he’s your guy.
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29′ Great chance for Kane there, probably England’s best yet. Controlling the ball at the right corner of the France penalty area, he takes a crack at Lloris, or rather a tiny bit of space over Lloris’s right shoulder, that is. The goalkeeper sees the shot blistering toward him in time, though, and dives to his left to parry it away.
Reporting from Qatar
Given that this is the first meeting between two of the tournament’s heavyweights in the knockout rounds — and at all, in fact, since Spain’s encounter with Germany in the group phase — the atmosphere at Al Bayt is distinctly subdued. European fans do not seem to have traveled in great numbers to Qatar, and compared with the vast, vibrant hordes following Argentina, Brazil and Morocco around, they have been almost conspicuous by their absence.
Reporting from Paris
At L'Époque in Paris, French fans erupted into cheers and hugs after seeing Tchouaméni's goal.
Reporting from Qatar
26′ Our Brazilian referee, Wilton Pereira Sampaio, waves for play to resume. No penalty. England disagrees. It strongly disagrees.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTBefore things get underway, let’s confront the elephant in the room. We’re all grown-ups here, because presumably all of the kids are second-screening on TikTok, so let’s just say the quiet part out loud: no, World Cup knockout games are not pretty. To newcomers, they may seem cagey, attritional. To older hands, the aesthetic quality of the play pales in comparison to, say, the latter rounds of the Champions League.
There are a few reasons for that. One is that these teams have had far less time to develop a cogent style than their club counterparts, who train together all year. They are, necessarily, less finely-tuned. They are also more obviously flawed. Didier Deschamps and Gareth Southgate cannot go out and buy a new midfielder or a better central defender, as Manchester City or Real Madrid might; they have to work with what they have got, and that means thinking as much about concealing their weaknesses as it does emphasizing their strengths.
But the most significant factor is just how much these games mean. World Cups roll around only once every four years. The players are acutely aware, as the England midfielder Jordan Henderson said earlier this tournament, that every game might be their last on this stage. That is even more true in the knockout stages than it is in the group phase. There are precious few one-and-done games in modern soccer: they feature in some domestic cup competitions, and in major finals. These are not far off the only occasions when teams do not get a return leg, or a chance to meet again later in the season. Everything can disappear in a puff of smoke.
The fact they are rarely pretty, though, is not a drawback. That tension, that pressure, is what makes these games so special. Consider some of the meetings we have seen already: Morocco holding the Spanish at arm’s length, and then resisting Portugal; Argentina having to hold its nerve against Australia, and then that rollercoaster finish against the Dutch. This is entertainment as exquisite as it is excruciating. And the good news is that the stakes only get higher from here.
France’s Didier Deschamps and England’s Gareth Southgate both kept their round of 16 lineups intact for Saturday’s semifinal at Al Bayt Stadium. Strength vs. strength.
One player to watch is not in the starting lineup: That’s England forward Raheem Sterling, who has returned to Qatar after leaving the team to see his family after a burglary at their home. He is on the bench tonight.
England lineup:
Jordan Pickford; Kyle Walker, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw; Jordan Henderson, Declan Rice; Jude Bellingham, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden; Harry Kane (c).
France lineup:
Hugo Lloris (c); Jules Koundé, Raphael Varane, Dayot Upamecano, Theo Hernandez; Aurelien Tchouameni, Adrien Rabiot; Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembélé, Olivier Giroud; Kylian Mbappé.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTEngland vs. France
How to watch: 2 p.m. Eastern. Fox, Telemundo.
For a rivalry that dates to the Norman Conquest, England and France have largely avoided each other at the World Cup, playing only twice — in 1982 and 1966, when the Three Lions won the whole bangers and mash.
England’s team in Qatar has the talent, tactics and, perhaps, fortitude to win another — if it can neutralize Kylian Mbappé, who seems to score as often as that New Balance commercial plays on Fox. Short of abducting him, or putting a banana in the tailpipes of the French motor coaches, England may be reduced to outwitting Les Bleus on the field.
Gareth Southgate’s decision, such as it is, pivots on whether he favors four in the back or just three. Opting for the latter, which would enable England to deploy two wingbacks in an effort to defuse France’s speed and crosses from both flanks (hello, Ousmane Dembele), would signal a switch in tactics but not one of desperation.
Either way, Kyle Walker will play a considerable role in muffling Mbappé and, thus, spearheading a defense that has shut out its last three opponents. A fourth, against a team conveying an aura of inevitability, might be unmanageable. Then again, all England — which has scored 12 across its four games — needs to do is finish with one more goal.
In an interview this summer, Kylian Mbappé touched on a wide range of topics, but the 2022 World Cup was central among them.
He said he is focused on cementing his status as a national icon in France. He wants to win another World Cup. He wants to finally lift the Champions League trophy with Paris St.-Germain. He wants to supplant Messi and Messi’s longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo as world player of the year and can summon — unprompted — the number of Ballon d’Or trophies each has won, perhaps the best example of how much such accolades mean to him, even as he insists collective honors come first.
A championship run here in Qatar would certainly move him further along on that quest. You can read my entire interview with Mbappé here.