France beat Azerbaijan 3-0 on Friday to edge closer to qualifying for FIFA 2026 World Cup, but Kylian Mbappe injured.<\/p>\n
Published On 11 Oct 202511 Oct 2025<\/p>\n
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Kylian Mbappe will miss Monday\u2019s qualifier in Iceland, where France could book their ticket to the 2026 World Cup, after taking another knock to his sore right ankle, the French team confirmed.<\/p>\n
Already suffering from a \u201csmall niggle\u201d in his right ankle from playing for Real Madrid, Mbappe took two knocks during Friday\u2019s 3-0 World Cup qualifying win over Azerbaijan in Paris, where he opened the scoring but was substituted before the end of the match.<\/p>\n
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The France captain\u2019s absence adds to the long list of forwards unavailable for October\u2019s World Cup qualifiers, which includes Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue, Marcus Thuram and Bradley Barcola.<\/p>\n
Mbappe \u201cwill not be able to play Monday against Iceland\u201d, a French Football Federation (FFF) statement read.<\/p>\n
After returning to the Clairefontaine training ground on Friday night, \u201cthe French team captain spoke with (coach) Didier Deschamps,\u201d who \u201cacknowledged his absence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mbappe \u201chas been released to his club (Real Madrid) and will not be replaced\u201d, the FFF added.<\/p>\n
The French superstar had already been rested for training with Les Bleus during the week with the same issue.<\/p>\n
Mbappe scored on the stroke of half-time and was then struck by a tackle from Rustam Ahmedzade. He took another knock to the same ankle late in the game and was replaced by Florian Thauvin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a sore ankle and he took a knock there. He preferred to come off; the pain was quite significant,\u201d Deschamps said after the French victory.<\/p>\n
Adrien Rabiot and the substitute Thauvin were also on the scoresheet as Deschamps\u2019s men remain unbeaten after three games and top of Group D.<\/p>\n
Les Bleus will book their passage to the United States, Canada and Mexico next year if they win in Iceland on Monday and Ukraine fail to beat Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France beat Azerbaijan 3-0 on Friday to edge closer to qualifying for FIFA 2026 World Cup, but Kylian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,94,36,12,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-491324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-sport"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}