If the extremity of French emotion showed how close this remarkable semi-final really was, their celebration comes at the expense of one public party. They may yet spoil another. Qatar will celebrate either way, as they have their blue-chip event, with two of their Paris Saint-Germain stars meeting.
Through that, France became just the seventh team to reach successive World Cup finals and may become just the third to retain the trophy, but only after a 2-0 win over Morocco that forced Didier Deschamps’s team to reach for their final reserves of energy.
