Mbappe penalty sends France through as Paraguay's players spark full-time brawl

France advanced to the World Cup quarter-finals with a 1-0 win over Paraguay in Philadelphia, but the victory was almost overshadowed by ugly scenes at the final whistle as both dugouts emptied and Paraguay’s Gustavo Velazquez had to be physically separated from French players.

Kylian Mbappe’s penalty was the only goal of a match that simmered with ill-temper throughout. Paraguay avoided a single booking despite repeatedly targeting Mbappe with aggressive challenges — a fact that drew widespread disbelief from pundits after the final whistle.

Mbappe appeared to rise above the provocation, laughing off the fouls late in the game before blanking goalkeeper Orlando Gill at the final whistle and roaring “Vamos!” to the crowd.

Former England goalkeeper Joe Hart was scathing in his assessment of Paraguay’s conduct. “I absolutely love how he’s behaved in this game, because they have come for him from minute one,” Hart said of Mbappe. “And towards the end when he was just laughing at the Paraguayan players — he’s allowed to be arrogant because he is brilliant, but the Paraguayan players were an absolute disgrace tonight.”

Hart continued: “If they were on my team I’d be dragging half of them off the pitch. I would never want to win that way, I would never want to play football that way — and the referee didn’t help in any of the circumstances. The fact that not one Paraguayan was booked inside the 90 minutes today is absolutely astonishing. Fair play to France — sometimes you can play beautiful football, but when you grind out a win as a team as they did tonight? Superb.”

Thomas Hitzlsperger was equally damning. “If you’re a neutral you can’t have any respect for them anymore,” he said. “It’s not disgraceful, it’s even worse.”

Thierry Henry kept his verdict brief: “Football won. I don’t want to talk about Paraguay.”

France now progress to the quarter-finals, where they will look to build on a performance that was far from their most fluent but demonstrated a resilience and collective resolve that Hart, for one, found impressive despite the chaos that surrounded it.