None of the teams before had made France look this uncomfortable. Paraguay, ranked 41st in the world and running on the adrenaline of knocking out Germany a round earlier, was supposed to be more of the same. But in Philadelphia’s sweltering heat, they weren’t. And what followed had Alexi Lalas reaching for his phone the moment the final whistle blew.

“Paraguay…qué vergüenza. Adiós,” Lalas posted on X, which simply translated to: “What a shame. Goodbye.”

The first half was something France hadn’t faced at this tournament. Paraguay deployed a compact five-back block that denied France’s attacking quartet, Mbappé, Dembélé, Olise, and Barcola, any space behind. The “Fab Four” registered just one shot combined in the first 45 minutes. The combined xG at halftime sat at 0.20 across both teams. The same defensive setup had taken down Germany days earlier, and Paraguay clearly believed it would hold here too. So, Paraguay had a real game plan, and it was working.

France manager and coach Didier Deschamps knew this was coming and chose to trust his players to figure it out rather than restructure before kickoff. He said after the game: “We have attacking quality, but any team will find things complicated against such a low block. Especially when intensity drops, which will happen in these conditions.”

Mbappe himself acknowledged the test: “We knew what kind of game we were going to get, but we showed that we are not just a team that can play attacking football. If we have to get our hands dirty, we will get our hands dirty.”

The defending wasn’t the problem. Everything around it was. Andrés Cubas went physical on Mbappé and sparked a pushing match. José Cáceres followed with a separate hard tackle on Mbappé. Gabriel Avalos caught Dayot Upamecano with an elbow. Every stoppage got dragged out. One Paraguay defender booted the ball into the second tier of the stadium to kill time. And through all of it, Paraguay didn’t pick up a single yellow card, the first time they’d gone card-free in a World Cup match since 1998 against Nigeria. The referee let them operate freely, and they leaned on it.

Deschamps made the decisive change at the hour mark, Doué for Barcola, and within ten minutes, Doué’s slashing run across the box ended when Diego Gómez brought him down. VAR confirmed the penalty. Paraguay’s players surrounded referee Ilgiz Tantashev, delaying it further. Mbappé scored anyway in the 70th minute, with Gill going the wrong way. France held on for 1-0.

Deschamps, himself a veteran of beating Paraguay in this exact stage at the 1998 World Cup, kept the post-match reaction measured: “If we had responded to provocation, like Germany did, it could have gone very badly for us.”

Orlando Gill, named Player of the Match despite the loss, was gracious: “I believe we could have gone much further had it not been for that penalty, as we controlled the game very well.”

He wasn’t wrong about the control. Lalas wasn’t wrong about the shame.