# England 6-4 France: The Wildest Third-Place Game in World Cup History Nobody wanted to be in Miami on Saturday night. Not England, who were still nursing the wounds of a last-gasp semi-final collapse against Argentina. Not France, who'd been outclassed by Spain just days earlier. A third-place playoff is the fixture every player dreads — the "no one remembers who finished third" game, the one both camps would have swapped for an early flight home. Then the two of them went and played out a 10-goal classic that will be remembered long after most World Cup finals are forgotten. **Final score: England 6-4 France.** ## How it unfolded England, written off after their gut-punch defeat to Argentina, came out of the blocks like a side with something to prove. They led 4-0 at half-time, with goals arriving at regular intervals across the first 45 minutes — the kind of ruthless, front-foot performance nobody expected from a team playing a game with genuinely nothing riding on it. Didier Deschamps, in what was confirmed as his final match in charge of France after 14 years at the helm, made wholesale changes at the break — four substitutions inside a minute of the restart. Whatever he said in that dressing room worked. France roared back into the contest with three goals in a 20-minute spell either side of the hour mark, hauling the scoreline back to 4-3 and turning a procession into a genuine contest. From there it turned into an arm-wrestle, and then a shootout. England restored their two-goal cushion in the 87th minute. France pulled one back deep into stoppage time to make it 5-4. And then, in the very last kick of the tournament for both sides, England scored again to seal it at 6-4 — a stoppage-time goal at the end of a stoppage-time goal, in a game that had no business being this dramatic. ## The team news that mattered Both managers used this as a chance to rest their biggest names — with mixed results. England left both Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham out of the starting XI, handing starts instead to Morgan Rogers, Marcus Rashford and Ivan Toney alongside Bukayo Saka. Bellingham was introduced from the bench as the game opened up in the second half. Kane didn't feature. France, by contrast, kept Kylian Mbappé and Michael Olise in from the start, still with one eye on the Golden Boot picture, while Bradley Barcola waited on the bench for his introduction as part of Deschamps' raft of changes. ## What it means For England, third place is their best World Cup finish since they won the tournament outright in 1966, giving Thomas Tuchel's side a genuinely positive note to end the tournament on after the manner of their semi-final exit. For France, it's a bittersweet ending — a losing scoreline in Deschamps' farewell game, but one that saw his players fight back from four goals down with real character before falling just short. The result also carries FIFA's third-place bonus with it: the podium finish is worth an additional $2m in prize money compared to fourth, a detail that will matter far more to the federations than the players out on the pitch chasing pride. ## The big picture Nobody will remember the third-place game from most World Cups. This one is different. Ten goals, a four-goal swing, a legendary manager's last stand, and a finish that went down to the very last kick of the tournament before the final itself had even been played — England vs France in Miami won't need much help being remembered. *Full-time: England 6-4 France (HT: 0-4)*