France pulverized Gibraltar 14-0 in Nice on Saturday as Les Bleus won their penultimate UEFA Euro 2024 qualifier in style on home soil. It was a night of records being broken and new ones being set with Kylian Mbappe, Olivier Giroud and Warren Zaire-Emery playing significant roles. The result does not change anything in Group B as the French needed to lose both games to even stand a chance of being overtaken in top spot. However, it does make Didier Deschamps’ men hot favorites to seal a Pot 1 berth for top seeding when the Euro draw is made in December.
We look at the numbers behind a historic evening for France against minnows Gibraltar.
3 – Kylian Mbappe scored three goals on the night with the captain scoring a superb lobbed effort as part of his prolific haul. That treble leveled and then overtook Antoine Griezmann to move Mbappe into third on Les Bleus’ all-time goal scorers list. Three is also the number of Warren Zaire-Emery’s ranking in terms of France national team debutants — the Paris Saint-Germain wonderkid is the third-youngest French debutant in history.
7 – France’s previous first-half record score until Saturday was 5-0 but Deschamps’ men have now stretched that as they went in at the break seven goals to the good at Allianz Riviera. Zaire-Emery, Mbappe, Marcus Thuram, Jonathan Clauss, Kingsley Coman and Youssouf Fofana goals already had the French bound for new records after 45 minutes.
6 – Mbappe did not just score three goals but he also provided three assists for a total of six direct contributions. A double hat-trick of sorts, the PSG talisman teed up Clauss, Fofana and Coman with the AS Monaco man returning the favor by providing one of Mbappe’s three goals towards the end of the game.
8 – The game saw eight different goal scorers in total with Mbappe’s hat trick followed by top scorer Olivier Giroud and Coman on two goals apiece. Thuram, Clauss, Fofana, Adrien Rabiot and Ousmane Dembele also got in on the act in Nice as the French ran riot against their 10-man opponents.
10 – France’s previous biggest goal haul before Gibraltar was 10 goals so Mbappe’s 74th minute goal for 11-0 made history by bettering that previous tally.
14 – Not only was it a record night for Les Bleus, it was also a record night for European Championship and World Cup qualifying. France’s biggest competitive victory is now a European qualification record largest winning margin too across Euro and World Cup qualifiers.
17 – No player below the age of 17 has ever debuted for France but two other historic figures have played for the French earlier than Zaire-Emery’s 17 years and 255 days. Felix Vial back in 1911 was just 17 years and 76 days while Maurice Gastiger was 17 years and 128 days in 1914 — both younger than the PSG prodigy.
72 – Gibraltar only had 11 players on the field for 18 minutes and had to play the remaining 72 with one man less than France and a 3-0 deficit already at that point. Although it would not have altered the result, it might have impacted the score and take away a few records had Ethan Santos not been sent off.
109 – Zaire-Emery is France’s youngest debutant in over 100 years and was only one year away from hitting another decade between him and Gastiger back in 1914.
300 – Mbappe now has 300 career goals for club and country combined before the age of 25 which none of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo managed to achieve. The breakdown of those goals is 227 with PSG, 46 with France and 27 with Monaco.
