On Saturday night in Philadelphia, France defeated Paraguay 1-0 courtesy of a Kylian Mbappe penalty to reach the last 16 of the World Cup. “Football won. I don’t want to talk about Paraguay,” said Thierry Henry, the former France forward, in his role as a pundit on Fox.Paraguay’s tactics, seeking to frustrate and disrupt France, had annoyed Henry as well as the current team and coach.An impressive display of dogged defending was mixed with play acting, challenges and an off-the-ball strike on Mbappe that only referee Ilgiz Tantashev seemed to believe were not worthy of yellow cards. As it was, Paraguay ended the game with no players booked and France with three.Yet it was clear that Paraguay had set out with a plan to irritate France. They used “every trick in the book”, according to France coach Didier Deschamps. Was Paraguay’s performance a “disgrace”, as some have called it? Or was it their best, and perhaps only, strategy to beat a side whose players would command a transfer value estimated to be almost nine times more than their own?The Athletic’s Stuart James and Thom Harris debate a controversial evening in Philadelphia.The World Cup's hottest ever match | World Cup Daily BriefingLuke Bosher and Felipe CardenasParaguay had no shame“Our team, through the entire competition, wanted to play the game. Even against the best teams, we never wanted to play anti-football; we always took care to compete head-to-head with our opponents.”That was the Cape Verde manager Bubista talking in the wake of his team being eliminated from the World Cup on Friday night after more than playing their part in one of the greatest matches in the tournament’s history.Bubista went on to use words such as “pride” and “dignity” when he talked about how well his players had performed in that thrilling 3-2 defeat against Argentina.In short, there’s a way to lose a football match — and Paraguay, that wasn’t it.On Saturday in Philadelphia, Gustavo Alfaro’s team turned up against France looking for a scrap. Provocation, intimidation, play-acting — you name it, Paraguay were guilty of it. Well, except in the eyes of a referee who seemed to forget that his primary job is to enforce the laws of the game. Maybe the heat got to Uzbek official Tantashev.It’s hard to find any other explanation. Paraguay got through a World Cup match for the first time since 1998 without picking up a yellow card, while France somehow collected three, including one for Michael Olise late in the game that was in keeping with both the abysmal standard of refereeing throughout (remember the supply teacher at school who had no control of the class? That was Tantashev) and the way Paraguay cheated.Matias Galarza, who had earlier swung an arm at Mbappe in an off-the-ball incident in the middle of a France attack, dramatically threw himself to the floor late in the second half, holding his face and jerking around on the grass like a fish suffocating on the deck of a boat. Tantashev, shamefully, was reeled in too, and ended up booking Olise.Matias Galarza flings himself down and Michael Olise ends up being booked (Al Bello/Getty Images)Talking of shame, Paraguay didn’t have any. It was win-at-all-costs. Or, as it turns out, lose-at-all-costs.