French television viewers were left thinking that Antoine Griezmann had scored an injury-time equaliser against Tunisia when the station TF1 cut to an ad break believing the final whistle had gone.
Griezmann volleyed home to cancel out Wahbi Khazri’s stunning opener for the North Africans and New Zealand referee Matthew Conger appeared to blow to signal the end of the game. That was the cue for the French station to go to a break - but Conger was then summoned to view a pitch-side monitor.
And after deciding that Griezmann was offside and interfering with play, he ruled the goal out. Viewers had no idea about the drama taking place at the Education City Stadium. And it was only when the programme resumed that presenters in the studio were able to explain that the world champions had been beaten.
France has a huge Tunisian population.
France boss Didier Deschamps insisted the referee had blown for full time and that he was mystified why the equaliser wasn’t given.
Deschamps said: “Maybe I need to look at the rules again. I don’t know all the laws of the game off by heart. But why did the referee blow his whistle for the end of the game and then decide to go to VAR?
“Is this even allowed? I am still waiting for someone to tell me whether this is okay or not.”
Deschamps made nine changes to the side which had already qualified from Group D with Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele all starting on the bench.
But the former France World Cup-winning captain’s plan to rest his star names backfired spectacularly.
He said: “We can’t tick all the boxes. The first objective was the most important and that was to seal our place in the round of 16. The 24 players won their first two games and lost the last one, but I need all 24 to be available for me in four days.
“A couple of them have been able to rest up, they will have fresh legs. We were coming out of two high-intensity games. We will play four games in 12 days, we needed a breath of fresh air.
“But we need to do better than we did. Yes, the opponent punished us and gave us a run for our money.
“I wasn’t underestimating the opponent, I wasn’t not taking the game seriously, I was thinking about the game that is waiting for us on Sunday.”
