Before the 2018 World Cup started, French football legend Marcel Desailly wrote in The Guardian that Manchester United’s Paul Pogba had to accept he wasn’t that superstar on the French national team. He was instead one of several, including Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann, Paris Saint-Germaine’s Kylian Mbappe and Chelsea’s Olivier Giroud, who had to work together to prevent the kind of self-destruction that has plagued their national side since at least Zinedine Zidane brained Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final.

During their game with Peru at the Ekaterinburg Arena on Thursday, France followed his advice in a manner that suggested somewhere in the Peruvian locker room, a finger on a monkey’s paw curled inwards and Desailly had to be careful what he wished for.

From the off, France greatly outmatched Peru in every level and spent the first half an hour running rings – at first figuratively, then literally – around Peru until Mbappe scored and revealed just what the game plan actually was for Les Bleus. The move started with Pogba and should have ended with Giroud, who caught his perfectly weighted pass on the edge of the box and took a clear shot at the target. It should have been a goal, and even after ricocheting off a defender, it was – until Mbappe sprinted up and knocked it in from barely inches off the goal line to officially make it his.

Narratives in sport can only come from the events that take place on and off the pitch, but in this case, the narrative of France being the international version of Hollywood FC has been in place for so long that it’s impossible to look at what came next as anything but an dark omen for the future. Once he scored and sent the crowd wild, Mbappe sprinted to the touchline to celebrate with teammate Griezmann and absolutely nobody else. Giroud, whose goal he had just poached, got there eventually but compared to, say, Harry Kane who got swamped by his entire team upon making the game against Tunisia 1-0 or the whole Uruguay bench clearing for Jose Gimenez’s last minute winner against Egypt, the reaction wasn’t simply muted, it felt like scorn.

From there, it became impossible to watch the match without seeing it as a 90-minute game of footballing one-upmanship in the spirit of the H.O.R.S.E. mode from the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game franchise. Like Desailly said, Pogba had to accept he wasn’t the star of the team, but that acceptance didn’t mean he (or any of his teammates for that matter) couldn’t become the star of the team on that night.

The score remained 1-0 until the final whistle but not through lack of trying. Mbappe couldn’t just beat his defender, he had to do it with stepovers, feints, quick turns. Pogba couldn’t just send a cross up to Giroud or Blaise Matuidi, he had to curl it up the pitch to where neither Giroud or Matuidi would score but instead ping-pong the ball to another player to try and create the Carlos Alberto style group goal that would still get played in the highlight reels almost 50 years later. Goals, it seemed, were secondary to going viral.

Five minutes into the second half, the ball found its way to Peru’s Pedro Aquino who took a shot from almost 30 yards out. The ball just about doesn’t curl all the way in and ends up bouncing off the corner, but it’s enough to remind France that Peru were actually involved in this game, were trying to win and seemingly could have gotten something out of it. For all of France’s showboating going forward, they only had grit going back – apt considering defending is the least appreciated part of the game – and once the South American team started to feel like their hourglass was running out of sand, they started to impose themselves with some seriously fluid and impressive play.

Close isn’t close enough in football and the Peruvian players will no doubt be haunted by the last 30 minutes of the game as Jefferson Farfan, Luis Advincula and Christian Cueva all found themselves in strong attacking positions that culminated in shots that were closed down by the French, find the wrong side of the post or wind up in the hand of keeper Hugo Lloris. 

Deserve has nothing to do with the final result but Peru, out of the tournament on the back of two 1-0 defeats, deserve better. Their ferocious spirit, spurred on by their wonderful fanbase, and prowess at moving the ball through the midfield can hopefully be harnessed and developed into a more complete game, hopefully leading to more World Cup appearances.