Mbappe Shrugs Off a Missed Penalty to Send France Past Morocco Into the Semi-Finals

France are into the World Cup semi-finals, and for the best part of an hour in Boston they made hard work of getting there. They beat Morocco 2-0 in front of 63,811, but the scoreline flatters the ease of it. Kylian Mbappe had a penalty saved before the interval, Morocco defended their box like men who fancied their chances of taking it deeper, and it took until the hour for the game to break the way the odds always suggested it would. Mbappe scored on 60 minutes, Dembele added a second six minutes later, and a contest that had threatened to become awkward was suddenly, quietly, over. France go to Dallas on Tuesday to face the winner of Spain and Belgium. Morocco go home having asked more questions than the final margin admits.

The penalty that should have changed the night

Morocco arrived with a plan and the discipline to hold it. They pressed in bursts, dropped into a compact shape when France had the ball, and for long spells they made the favourites play in front of them rather than through them. The problem was that they handed France a way in. On 25 minutes Noussair Mazraoui caught Mbappe inside the area, the penalty was given, and the tournament's leading forward stood over the chance to settle French nerves before they had properly gathered.

Yassine Bounou had other ideas. The Morocco goalkeeper, who has made a career out of these moments, guessed right and pushed Mbappe's spot-kick away, and the miss did more than keep the score level. It gave Morocco something to believe in and it put a familiar doubt into a France side that has not always been convincing in this tournament even while winning. Lucas Digne rattled the crossbar in first-half stoppage time, the closest France came before the break, but the half ended goalless and with the underdogs looking the more comfortable of the two teams. For thirty minutes, Morocco were exactly where they wanted to be.

Mbappe and Dembele find the difference

What separates a side like France from a side like Morocco is rarely effort and often just the moment when quality refuses to be contained any longer. It came on the hour. Mbappe worked himself half a yard on the ball, picked his spot, and found the far corner, the kind of finish that looks inevitable in hindsight and was anything but while Bounou was keeping his side level. It was Mbappe's eighth goal of a tournament in which he has carried France's attack more or less single-handed, and the redemption after the penalty was not lost on a player who tends to answer his own bad moments faster than most.

The second killed the tie. Six minutes later Dembele collected the ball, shifted it onto his stronger side and drove a shot that crept past Bounou at his near post, a goal the keeper will feel he might have kept out on another night but one that owed everything to the pace and directness Dembele brings when France finally get their forwards running at a retreating defence. At 2-0 with a little over twenty minutes to play, Morocco's shape had to open up, and an opponent that had been so careful for an hour could not afford to be careful any longer. France, who finished with a 21-4 advantage in shots, had the game exactly where their manager wanted it.

The one sour note came on 76 minutes, when Mbappe was withdrawn holding his ankle. He played the moment down afterwards. "I have a minor ankle injury, but I am completely fine. That is all that happened," he said, and France will hope the reassurance holds, because a semi-final without their captain is a very different proposition. His night, injury aside, was another reminder that this France side lives and dies by the form of one man, and that for now the man is delivering.

What it means for France

There is a bigger arc here that France will be quietly aware of. Reach the final in Dallas and they will have played in three consecutive World Cup finals, a feat only West Germany and Brazil have managed in the tournament's history. That is the company this generation is keeping, and it explains why a manager might tolerate a performance that was efficient rather than emphatic. Winning ugly against a good side is a knockout skill in its own right, and France have now done it more than once on the way to the last four. The storm-hit win over Iraq and the opening victory over Senegal already looked like the platform of a side pacing itself, and Boston did nothing to change that reading.

The caveat is the one that has followed France all tournament. Take Mbappe out of the equation, whether through the ankle or simply a quiet evening, and the margin narrows sharply. Dembele's goal was a welcome sign that the supporting cast can hurt teams too, but Morocco spent an hour proving that a disciplined, organised opponent can make France look ordinary for long stretches. Spain or Belgium will have watched the first half with real interest. Neither will defend as deep as Morocco did, but both have the players to punish the sloppiness France showed before the interval, and a side chasing history cannot keep leaving its best work until the hour mark.

Verdict: Morocco leave with their heads high

Morocco will be sore for a while, and they are entitled to be. They came to Boston without the injured Ismael Saibari and without a natural way of turning their control of territory into clear chances, yet they still forced France into a nervy, uncomfortable evening and were a Bounou save at the other end from a genuinely different game. Head coach Mohamed Ouahbi struck the right note afterwards. "The future will be bright if we continue like this," he said. "We faced a very difficult opponent and it's a disappointment, but we'll keep working for the future." It was the assessment of a man who knows his side did not embarrass themselves against one of the favourites, and who can see the shape of something being built rather than merely a night that got away.

For France, the verdict is simpler and more useful. They are into the semi-finals, they got there without playing especially well, and they still have the one player capable of settling any match on his own. That combination is exactly what makes a champion hard to remove. Whether it is enough to carry them to a third final in a row will depend on the ankle, on whether the supporting cast can do more of what Dembele did, and on France finding a version of themselves that does not need sixty minutes to warm up. On this evidence they are good enough to win the whole thing and vulnerable enough to lose it in an afternoon. Dallas will tell us which.

Sources: Reporting from Sky Sports, corroborated by FIFA, ESPN, NBC News and Al Jazeera.