Ballon d'Or winner Ousmane Dembélé scored a magnificent first-half hat-trick, his first with Les Bleus, as France beat a second-string Norway 4-1 on Friday to seal the top spot in Group I. Star striker Erling Haaland was one of several players rested by the Norway coach ahead of the World Cup knockouts stage.
France's final group match against Norway had been billed as a showdown between Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, but Ousmane Dembélé tore up the script as he scored a hat-trick to seal top spot for Les Bleus in Group I.
The winger scored three times in the space of 25 minutes in the first half to send the 2018 world champions and 2022 runners-up into the knockout phase of this year’s tournament with a spring in their step.
Read moreFrance top group as Dembélé's first-half treble downs second-string Norway
The France players had promised to go for a win as a tribute to coach Didier Deschamps who has flown home from the United States to attend the funeral of his mother.
By finishing top of Group I, France are likely to meet Sweden in the first knockout round of the tournament. As runners-up, Norway will play Ivory Coast.
Deschamps is due to return to the squad on Saturday to begin preparing for the next phase.
Les Bleus – like Norway – had made sure of a place in the Round of 32 before Friday's clash but wanted to top the group to take advantage of a lighter travel schedule offered by the tournament’s North American criss-crossing route map.
Their task was made easier by Norway coach Stale Solbakken’s decision to rest all but one of the players who started against Senegal earlier this week, including goal-scoring machine Haaland and captain Martin Odegaard.
France went on the attack from the kickoff.
Kylian Mbappé, who is likely to be challenging Haaland for the World Cup’s Golden Boot top scorer award, slammed an angled shot off the bar with barely 20 seconds on the clock.
Six minutes later Mbappé swept a glorious cross-field pass to Dembélé who cut inside and then outside a defender before blasting an angled shot past goalkeeper Egil Selvik.
Mbappé fed Dembélé again in the 20th minute and the Paris Saint-Germain forward gained a yard of space against his marker once again to score with a dipping shot.
Norway pulled a goal back almost immediately through Thelo Aasgaard before Dembélé became only the third France player to score a World Cup hat-trick – after Just Fontaine and Mbappé – by curling a low shot into the bottom corner in the 32nd.
It was the second-earliest hat-trick ever scored at a World Cup, behind Erich Probst who got three goals for Austria in 1954 against Czechoslovakia after 24 minutes.
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Jorgen Strand Larsen blew a chance to get Norway back into the game early in the second half when his soft penalty was saved by Mike Maignan.
Winger Oscar Bobb forced Maignan into another save as the Scandinavians exposed some vulnerability in their opponents' back line before Désiré Doué got France’s fourth with a header from a cross by substitute Bradley Barcola in the dying moments.
Norway coach Solbakken said it had been a "no-brainer" to rest so many of his usual starters against France, including Haaland and Odegaard.
"The only argument for not doing what we did is that the fans in Norway and here could have seen Erling and Martin. But then it wouldn't be a long World Cup, and that's what we're here for," he said. "We're here to go as far as possible."
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)
