DEFENDING CHAMPIONS, FRANCE SURVIVE AUSTRALIAN SCARE WIN 4-1 IN WORLD CUP DEFENCE

By Eniola Olatunji 

Defending world football champions, Les Bleus of France survived a first round scare from the Kangaroos of Australia in a group D match played in Qatar on Tuesday night rallying back to a 4-1 victory.

The Kangaroos fired a Saudi Arabia like warning in the 9th minute when Craig Goodwin collected a Matthew Leckie assist to score a brilliant goal that sent shivers down the spines of the French team and all football lovers across the world.

Unmarked Adrien Rabiot collected a pass from Theo Hernandez in the six yard box and slammed in the equalizer in the 27th minute.

Former Arsenal Striker, Olivier Giroud scored a brace for France in the 32nd minute through Rabiot assist and also in the 71st minute from a powerful header when a telegraphic pass from Mbappe went beeping on air.

France combinations were beautiful tiki taka touches in football which made a cross pass from Ousmane Dembele to aerially connect Kylian Mbappe’s bullet header in the 68th minute which came as France’s 3rd goal.

France tops group D table with 3 points while Tunisia and Denmark share a point each leaving Australia with no point.

France ranked 4th are making the 16th appearance were world champions in 1998 and 2018; runners-up in 2006 and Bronze medalists in 1958 and 1986 as well as 4th place in 1982 and 2014.

Australia ranked 38 are making their 6th appearance and their best performance was a round of 16 in 2006.

Tunisia will meet Australia at 11am on Saturday and France will face Denmark at 5pm in the second round matches of Group D.

Today, Wednesday, German machines will play the Japanese toy experts at 2pm in group E just as Spain clashes with Costa Rica at 5pm also in group E.

Group F will come up at 11am when Morocco will play Croatia and Belgium will square up with Canada at 8pm.