Denmark v France - Denmark join France in last 16 after first goalless draw of World Cup - 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia - Match 37
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. After 12 days of largely entertaining football, plenty of goals and no shortage of incident, the 2018 World Cup finals served up the first stalemate. Match 37, to give the fixture its official Fifa title, ended goalless and was played out to a soundtrack of whistles and rumblings of discontent, followed by loud boos at the final whistle.
Denmark, through to the World Cup knockout stage for the first time since 2002, were not going to apologise for their part in a soporific evening of football that went down badly with the majority of the 78,011 spectators, especially when the ball started to be passed sideways and backwards with more than 10 minutes remaining.
As far as Åge Hareide and his players are concerned, this was mission accomplished as Denmark collected the point that guaranteed second spot in Group C irrespective of the result in the game between Peru and Australia. Denmark can now look forward to a last-16 tie against Croatia in Nizhny Novgorod on Sunday, and that was the only thing on the players’ minds when they celebrated in front of their supporters at the end.
Through as group winners, France have also achieved their objective, albeit without delivering a performance in any of their three matches to suggest they are capable of winning the tournament. Even allowing for the fact that Didier Deschamps made six changes here, with one eye on their last‑16 game against Argentina in Kazan, it did not seem unreasonable to expect more attacking enterprise from a team that started with Ousmane Dembélé, Antoine Griezmann and Thomas Lemar playing behind Olivier Giroud.
Denmark made life difficult by sitting so deep that they had 11 players behind the ball at times – Andreas Christensen, the Chelsea central defender, was deployed as a holding midfielder for another layer of protection – but there was still a worrying lack of imagination and creativity about France’s play.
Nabil Fekir, who came on for Griezmann with 22 minutes remaining, looked more dangerous than anyone else in a France shirt and at least tried to inject some life into proceedings with a couple of efforts on goal. Yet just about everyone else seemed happy to call it a day, safe in the knowledge that both teams were happy with the outcome. “The last 15 minutes was a neutral match,” Deschamps admitted.
SOURCE:https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/26/denmark-france-world-cup-group-c-match-report
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