France defeated Paraguay in an ill-tempered World Cup clash to confirm their place in the quarter-finals of the tournament after a match that threatened to boil over on more than one occasion00:14, 05 Jul 2026Updated 00:27, 05 Jul 2026France's celebrations were almost marred by unsavoury scenes following their World Cup win over Paraguay. The South American side expressed their anger after being knocked out of the competition, directing their fury at the officials and Les Bleus as tensions boiled over in roasting Philadelphia.‌Kylian Mbappe's penalty separated the sides in a match that had been niggly. Paraguay escaped bookings but looked to disrupt player with aggressive challenges to the frustration of the France team.‌That attitude continued at the full-time whistle and Paraguay's Gustavo Velazquez had to be separated from opposition players. Mbappe had already blanked goalkeeper Orlando Gill to celebrate and roared “Vamos!” to the crowd.‌Analysing the match, pundit Joe Hart was disgusted by the behaviour of Paraguay's players throughout the match, and impressed that Mbappe was able to keep his cool after being niggled at throughout the game."I absolutely love how [Mbappe] he's behaved in this game, because they have come for him from minute one," he said. "And towards the end when he was just laughing at the Paraguayan players, that is... He's allowed to be arrogant because he is brilliant, but the Paraguayan players were an absolute disgrace tonight."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, you can see what it means. Sometimes you can play beautiful football, pass people off the park - but when you grind out a win as a team and get that win as they did tonight? Superb."Thomas Hitzlsperger added: "If had a lot of respect for them going into the game. I'm glad my vocabulary in English is not that good because Joe just said 'disgraceful' - I've got various other words I would use for them in German but I don't have them in English.‌"Because I have little to no respect anymore for this Paraguay team; the way they behaved on the penalty incident. If you're from Paraguay, you probably like that team: they're like warriors. If you're a supporter of the French team or neutral, you can't have any respect anymore for the way they behaved."This is not just disgraceful, this is even worse. That's why I totally agree, the way Kylian Mbappe and the entire team have controlled themselves - that they don't walk off the pitch injured, to me is almost a miracle. And the referee, to finish this off - it's probably the worst performance I've seen in this tournament."On Fox, Thierry Henry declared: "Football won. I don't want to talk about Paraguay."Article continues belowThere will be more to follow on this breaking news story and Mirror Sport will bring you the very latest updates, pictures and video as soon as possible.Please check back regularly for updates on this developing story.Follow us on Google News, Flipboard, Apple News, Twitter, Facebook or visit The Mirror homepage.