Just over an hour after this year’s tournament escaped its first draw game in the day’s earlier fixture – Switzerland vs Ecuador – France took on Honduras with the fans expectations at a tournament low after the relatively tame nature of the fixture that preceded it. Both sides came into this tournament in a rich vein of form as the former world champions thumped Jamaica 8-0 in their last fixture whereas Honduras tamed England in the unpredictable Miami climate.
Quite how this versatile French side would coach with the physicality of Honduras was unclear – read on to find out how it all panned out!
Honduras looked much brighter in the opening few minutes, penning France back into their own half for the opening five minutes or so. Before long though with Pogba, Matuidi, and particularly Valbuena beginning to find spaces from which to show their passing range with the focus on bringing the width of Greizmann and Debuchy into the game to test the Honduras defence. Valbuena and Greizmann interchanged regularly, giving the opposition a lot to think about whilst playing clever little one-twos between themselves and Debuchy.
Soon enough then, the roles were reversed from the opening exchanges as the Hondurans were struggling to get out of their own half.
The trickery of the French down their right-hand side saw them win three free-kicks in very good wide positions for Valbuena to swing a ball in. The first two didn’t amount to much however the third attempt bounced around the box a bit before falling to the feet of Matuidi who showed great technique to volley towards goal only for the Honduran keeper to pull out a fantastic reflex save to thwart his efforts.
Antoine Greizmann went closer though as he struck the crossbar with a fantastic header. Patrice Evra was given space to charge down the left from his defensive position for the first time in the match and whipped in a beautiful cross towards the winger who had leaped above the colossuses at the back but couldn’t finish the chance off. Not long afterwards Greizmann was at it again, getting on the end of a fantastic counter-attacking move which saw Matuidi sweep a wonderful diagonal ball across the ground, half way up the pitch to Valbuena before he flicked a ball in to Greizzman – he could only head over this time though.
Palacios was having a nightmare game in midfield for Honduras and could not keep Pogba quiet at all. His frustration showed after the 30 minute mark as he took a good few slices at the youngster’s legs in an attempt to dispossess the Frenchman. Pogba kicked out in anger (not quite Beckham-esque) but he (and Palacios) escaped with a booking – a sending off would have been harsh! France were still very much in control but struggled for the remainder of the first half to penetrate as effectively after the Pogba booking. Palacios saw red again at the end of the first half (quite literally) as he tangled with Pogba again. Chasing a long ball into the box by Yohan Cabaye, Palacios pushed Pogba to kill off the offensive move; this resulted in a second booking for the Honduran midfielder and he was off. Karim Benzema stepped up to take the penalty and after waiting an age to take it he slotted cooly into the bottom corner, sending the goalkeeper the wrong way to grab his first World Cup goal for France.
Fighting against a team of ten men can be more difficult than playing against eleven – an argument that Clarence Seedorf and Thierry Henry fully endorsed at half time – therefore a quick start for France was crucial. Boy, did they get it! And in the process we saw the first (necessary) use of goal-line technology in this summer’s tournament. Just over a minute into the second half Yohan Cabaye was at it again, pinging a diagonal ball into the path of Karim Benzema who crashed his shot against the post only for the keeper to spill the ball millimetres over the line when trying to smother it up, making it 2-0 to France.
The early goal somewhat spoiled what was an exceptional performance up to that point by the French as they were much more willing to sit back and probe rather than go hard on the offensive end as they had been up to that point in the game. Benzema wasn’t finished yet though – having had the second goal ruled as an own goal by the Honduras goalkeeper, when he next found himself in a position to score after another ball from out wide pinged it’s way around the box the Real Madrid striker venomously struck the ball into the back of the net for his second World Cup goal. He’d never scored in the finals before but he didn’t look like missing here tonight.
France soon settled down again though whilst managing to maintain complete control of the game and were able to canter towards a 3-0 win. This fixture was a bit of a non-started for Honduras, a side from whom much was expected in some circles after how ordinary they made England look a week ago. France on the other hand were sublime: powerful, composed, solid – the typical French seesawing at World Cup tournaments looks like it could continue here as France’s versatility in this fixture against a very physical side looks capable of taking them quite far in the tournament.