At 0:00 on July 2, Beijing time, the 5th 1/8 final of the 2024 European Cup was played at the Grand Arena in Dusseldorf. Muani came off the bench to create an own goal as France eliminated Belgium 1-0 and reached the quarter-finals.
The strong enemy is in front, and he does not dare to be careless. France coach Didier Deschamps is all the main players, Griezmann is back in the starting line-up, and Thuram replaces Dembele as the right winger, which is still stable; Belgium coach Tedesco was much more aggressive, with four attackers up front, with Romelu Lukaku still playing as the starting centre-forward.
After the opening, the two giants did not kick out the expected confrontation, but slowed down the pace, one tightened the fence, and the other focused on stability.
Obviously, who is the leader of the two sides, catches each other's mistakes, and advances to the front court is also mainly tentative, and the point is up to the end.
In the first half, most of the shots on goal from both sides were long-range shots, with Belgium having only one shot on goal and France having only one shot on target from nine shots, and the only highlight was the individual ability performance of their respective aces - Mbappe's sprint breakthrough and De Bruyne's pass.
Other than that, it was lackluster, and the scene was rather dull.
In the second half, the scene was the same. Mbappe couldn't get a chance to face the goal with all his might, Griezmann was unable to play back and saw that the situation was getting more and more stalemate, and Deschamps finally made a substitution.
In the 62nd minute, Muani went up and Thuram went down.
It was this substitution that changed the outcome of this competition. In the 85th minute, Kante made a diagonal pass, Muani turned around and forced a goal, Vertonghen stretched out his foot to block, the ball refracted into the net, and it was an own goal again! France leads 1-0.
The final score was 1-0, and the French team entered the quarterfinals for the first time in 8 years.
According to the statistics after the game, the shooting ratio was 19 to 5, the shot on target ratio was 2 to 2, and the two giants only had 4 shots on target in total.
In this European Cup, the French team still scored zero goals in 4 games, only relying on Mbappe's penalty to break the zero goal drought, but advanced to the quarterfinals, but relied on 2 own goals to sing all the way, extremely lucky. Unfortunately, the golden generation of the European Red Devils is saying goodbye, possibly permanently.