France Reviewed World Cup Matches

4:6

For forty-five minutes, between Rice’s early strike and Mbappe’s reply at 48, England held a lead that made the eventual 4:6 scoreline feel straightforward. That is the casual reading: England scored six, England were better. The numbers complicate it.

3:0

France cruised past Iraq 3-0 in the group stage, fully confirming their favorite status on xG (2.67 to 0.63).

0:2

The three saves made by Spain’s goalkeeper are the defensive foundation of this 0:2 result. France reach the target often enough to suggest a route back, but each stop preserves the growing sense that their attacks lack the clean final action.

2:0

France won the underlying argument by a wide margin. The score was 2:0, the chance total was 3.04 to 0.14, and those numbers fit each other cleanly. This was not a puzzle about possession or passing volume. It was a match about who kept producing expensive moments, and who did not.

0:1

Group D had already drawn the outline. France arrived first with 9 points, Paraguay third with 4, both already through, and the recent head-to-head offered no romance for the underdog either: two meetings, two defeats, the latest a 0 : 1 on July 4. A casual viewer could still leave this one saying it was only a penalty, therefore roughly even. That is tidy. It is also wrong. France had the board from the start and spent most of the night moving pieces where they wanted. Paraguay set up in a 5-4-1 under Gustavo Alfaro. France used a 4-2-3-1 with Didier Deschamps keeping his usual spacing across the pitch. The result was not dramatic; it was repetitive.

3:0

France scored almost exactly what they created: 3.17 xG, three goals, a 0.95 conversion rate. No hot streak, no fortune — just 25 shots of sustained pressure. Sweden''s goalkeeper made nine saves and still lost by three.

1:4

1.69 to 1.31. That was the expected-goals split in Oslo, and Norway sat on the better side of it. The scoreboard still read 1:4 for France. At this gap between the two xG totals, a model built on independent Poisson scoring puts the odds of this exact outcome at roughly 4 percent — which is why the crime index lands at 91. Losing with the better xG number isn't rare on its own; it happens to almost every side in the tournament sooner or later. What's rare is the size of the gap: a three-goal margin running against the expected-goals lean shows up far less often than a one-goal margin doing the same.

3:1

France beat Senegal 3-1 thanks to a late Mbappe brace, backing up the win with an xG reading of 1.79 to 0.53.