Kylian Mbappé has a goal and an assist as France beats Morocco 2-0 in the World Cup quarterfinals

Sto­ry by KYLE HIGH­TOW­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Kylian Mbap­pé had a goal and an as­sist af­ter miss­ing a first-half penal­ty kick, Ous­mane Dem­bélé scored the oth­er and France beat Mo­roc­co 2-0 Thurs­day in the World Cup quar­ter­fi­nals.

Mbap­pé’s goal in the 60th minute was the 20th of his World Cup ca­reer and came in his 20th match at the tour­na­ment, mov­ing him one be­hind Ar­genti­na cap­tain Li­onel Mes­si. Dem­bélé scored his fifth goal of the tour­na­ment in the 66th.

Mbap­pé was tak­en down in the 76th minute and was tak­en off for a sub­sti­tute a minute lat­er. He was then shown sit­ting on the bench with an ice pack on his right an­kle.

Af­ter the match and with both shoes on, Mbap­pé ran and jumped in cel­e­bra­tion with his team­mates.

France will face ei­ther Spain or Bel­gium in the semi­fi­nals in Dal­las on Tues­day.

France beat Mo­roc­co by the same score in the semi­fi­nals of the 2022 tour­na­ment in Qatar when the At­las Li­ons be­came the first African team to make it that far. France now re­mains on track to be­come on­ly the third na­tion to play in the fi­nal of three con­sec­u­tive World Cups.

Mbap­pé got his goal with a per­fect­ly placed shot just in­side the far post af­ter Mo­roc­co failed to clear the ball. He re­ceived the ball just out­side the area, took a cou­ple steps for­ward and then sent his shot sail­ing in­to the net. He ex­tend­ed both arms and ran to the side­line to cel­e­brate with his team­mates.

France’s sec­ond goal came af­ter Mbap­pé took a pass and tapped it back for Dem­bélé. Mbap­pé kept run­ning for­ward and took de­fend­ers with him, open­ing space for Dem­bélé’s shot.

France held a 21-4 ad­van­tage in shots on goal and 8-1 edge in shots on tar­get for the game.

Mbap­pé al­so had the first shot on goal of the game, just miss­ing wide right in the fourth minute. Then, in the 25th, he was run­ning up the left side when he was chopped down in the box by Mo­roc­co de­fend­er Nous­sair Mazraoui. Ref­er­ee Fa­cun­do Tel­lo quick­ly point­ed to the penal­ty spot.

Mbap­pé lined up wait­ing for his at­tempt but was held up by a lengthy video re­view. He was fi­nal­ly cleared to shoot in the 28th minute, but af­ter a hes­i­ta­tion, Mbap­pé’s shot to­ward the right cor­ner was cor­ralled by goal­keep­er Yas­sine Bounou, who guessed the di­rec­tion of the shot cor­rect­ly.

Mbap­pé made his on­ly oth­er penal­ty at­tempt at this year’s World Cup in France’s 1-0 vic­to­ry over Paraguay in the round of 16.

Still, France was by far the more ac­tive team of­fen­sive­ly in the first half, hold­ing a 13-1 ad­van­tage in shots on goal.

Mo­roc­co’s best op­por­tu­ni­ty came just be­fore the half­time whis­tle when Achraf Haki­mi sent a free kick from just out­side the box past the right post. —FOXBOR­OUGH, Mass. (AP)