The Story of France National Team in The World Cup Part 3

Continuing to the series "The story of the France national team in the World Cup," we reach the 2006 and 2018 world cups.

World Cup 2006

The 2006 FIFA World Cup is the eighteenth FIFA World Cup tournament. Germany hosted the tournament for the second time in its history after West Germany hosted the 1974 tournament.

This tournament was held on June 9, 2006, and continued until July 9, 2006, with the participation of 32 teams, there countries that reached the finals for the first time: Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Serbia, and Montenegro.

France came into Group G along with Switzerland, South Korea, and Togo, and started its matches with a 0-0 draw with Switzerland, and then also with South Korea 1-1, putting itself in danger of exiting the first round, as happened in the 2002 World Cup,

But Zidane's colleagues rose and beat Togo 2-0, with goals by Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, to put France through to the second round in second place behind leaders Switzerland.

In the second round, France defeated Spain 3-1, despite being behind in the result, with a goal by David Villa, but Franck Ribery equalized the result, then Patrick Vieira added the second goal, and Zidane scored third goal to qualify France to the quarterfinals.

In the quarterfinals and at the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt, the French national team faced its star-studded Brazilian counterpart, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Adriano, Kaka, and others.

The French team managed to win 1-0 with a goal scored by Thierry Henry in the 57th minute, taking advantage of a huge mistake in coverage by Roberto Carlos.

In a match that witnessed a miraculous performance by the legend Zinedine Zidane, who manipulated the stars of the Brazilian national team as if he was in a training session.

Brazil tried hard to equal the result, and its most dangerous attempt was a direct free kick by Ronaldinho (the best player in the world and the winner of the Golden Ball at the time), but his shot crossed the crossbar by a few centimeters.

Spanish referee Luis Medina Cantalejo announced the end of the match with a shocking qualification for France.

In the semi-finals, France faced Portugal, which in turn contained a number of stars, most notably Cristiano Ronaldo, the Manchester United star at the time.

Bayern Munich's Allianz Arena hosted this match, with an attendance of 69,000 spectators, under the leadership of Uruguayan referee Jorge Larrionda.

The French team scored the first goal through Zidane from a penalty kick and was able to keep the goal until the end to qualify France for the final for the second time in its history.

The final match was held at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and under the leadership of Argentine referee Horacio Ilozondo, in which the French team faced its Italian counterpart.

From the first minutes, and at the 7th minute, Florent Malouda fell inside the penalty area, so the Argentine referee announced a penalty kick that sparked a long debate, but most importantly, is the way Zidane took the penalty.

In front of a giant goalkeeper like Buffon, it is unimaginable what Zizou did. A Panenka-style shot hit the crossbar before it crossed the goal line, so the result was 1-0 for France.

After that, defender Marco Materazzi scored the equalizer with a perfect header, but Marco was not satisfied with that, but directly contributed to Zidane's expulsion with a red card after the famous incident that occurred between them in the overtime of the final match.

As expected, after Zidane was sent off with a red card, France lost in the absence of its leader and inspiration, with penalty kicks.

Thus, France fails to achieve its second title after the 1998 title.