In the Women's World Cup group stage, France weren't exactly impressive. Coming in to the tournament as the third-ranked side in the world, most expected France to cruise through their group with ease en route to trying to making a title push with a wildly talented and exciting squad headlined by the significant talents of Eugenie Le Sommer.
France finally display their dominance in huge win over South Korea
France had been surrounded by questions in this Women’s World Cup, but on Sunday they provided some answers when they thrashed Korea 3-0 in the first knockout round.
Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports
That didn't quite happen. France won their group, sure, but had to eke out a win against England in their opener, and then were the victim in arguably the biggest Women's World Cup upset ever when they fell to a 2-0 loss to Lady Andrade and Colombia. They thrashed Mexico 5-0, but that seemed more like a perfunctory dismantling a team that they completely and utterly outclassed than actually putting in a dominant shift. Questions were being asked as to how good this France team really was, questions that seemed perfectly valid considering their performances so far.
That changed on Sunday against South Korea.
Against Korea, a side that showed good quality and lots of fight in their group stage run, France came out swinging hard and fast, scoring twice in the first eight minutes and completely dominating their opponents. Korea looked utterly helpless against France’s speed, technical skill, and ruthless efficiency both on the ball and in defense, easily breaking up almost every try at building up an attack that Korea made.
France weren’t perfect and they made a handful of mistakes, but the difference between their mistakes today and their mistakes in the group stage is that this time there was always another French player there to clean up the mess. They controlled the pace and flow of this match with ease, slowing the whole match down when they wanted to conserve energy, and kicking the speed back up when they wanted to press for another goal.
With that degree of control, it was completely unsurprising when France scored a third goal just two minutes in to the second half, killing virtually and chance that Korea had to come back and make the match interesting. It’s not like Korea had much of a chance to ever get that goal -- even when they got shots off, they came from poor angles after getting funneled away from goal by France’s defense, or from long range out of sheer desperation. That as much as the scoreline is the mark of a truly dominant performance by the winners.
Now with a quarterfinal fight with Germany looming, France will have to play with this same edge and quality again. Germany have been a dominant force so far in this World Cup, but France have turned on the jets at just the right time to go toe-to-toe with them. That’s going to be a battle well worth watching.
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