Michael Olise scored three and France overcame a brief scare from Northern Ireland to wrap up their pre-World Cup friendlies with a comfortable 3-1 win. The Bayern Munich star was effective throughout and good value for his hat-trick as Les Bleus saw off the visitors without really getting out of second gear. It’s hard to imagine a better result before France move to the U.S.<\/p>\n
It was never really that complicated for France. To Northern Ireland’s credit, they made it tricky for 40 minutes. Les Bleus went close to full strength here, with the Mbappe-Doue-Dembele-Olise quartet deployed. And for nearly the entire first half, they were left frustrated. Northern Ireland had their moments, too, and could have scored after a clever bit of play in the 40th minute. <\/p>\n
And then the hosts turned it on. Olise bagged his first on the stroke of half-time. A deflection fell to his feet, and Olise dealt with the rest, smashing home from five yards out. He added a second just after the break, latching onto a loose ball and sending it flying past a helpless keeper.<\/p>\n
But Northern Ireland pulled one back. Their goal was a scrappy thing. Shea Charles wriggled past Dayot Upamecano and pulled back for Patrick Kelly, who tapped home from two yards out. But France’s quality shone in the end. Olise bagged a lovely third to put the game beyond doubt, and the visitors never really had another good look. This was mightily convincing, and even if France conceded, Deschamps will be happy.<\/p>\n
GOAL rates France’s players from Decathlon Arena…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Olise scored three and France overcame a brief scare from Northern Ireland to wrap up their pre-World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1207,5,23348,70,1999,22348,10832,9302],"class_list":["post-32782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-features","tag-france","tag-france-vs-northern-ireland","tag-friendlies","tag-k-mbappe","tag-m-olise","tag-northern-ireland","tag-player-ratings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}