It was another imperfect performance from Les Bleus, but Kylian Mbappé & Co. have themselves one win away from a title defense.
AL KHOR, Qatar—Just about every French touch, and every one of their surprisingly infrequent forays into the opposition half, was greeted with the shrill whistle of thousands.
The clamor took Wednesday’s semifinal—a game that already came with stratospheric stakes—and injected it the sort of fervor and partisan tension that’s often missing at a World Cup. Tens of thousands of Morocco supporters, in unison, were piercing the Qatari night even in the most innocuous moments. They whistled France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris.