France look to round off Group F with a win against Portugal

France will face off against Portugal on Wednesday night as they look to cement top spot in Group F.

Les Bleus will be looking to bounce back from a poor result against Hungary where they were held to a 1-1 draw. Didier Deschamps’ side play a Portugal side who will be low on confidence after losing 4-2 to Germany in matchday two.

The two sides will meet in Budapest and a point could well be enough for France to secure top spot, should Germany not be able to defeat Hungary in Munich.

While France struggled to really break down Hungary last time out, they may well be able to go back to their quick counter-attacking play and allow Portugal to dominate the ball and look to hit them with the frightening pace of Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann.

Playing this way served them well first game against Germany with Paul Pogba pulling the strings from midfield and N’Golo Kante operating as the ‘shuttler’ alongside him.

Mbappe will be looking to score his first goal of the tournament to give him some confidence going into the knockout stage and France will be hoping he can do just that while guiding them to group winners.

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Deschamps’ will be without Ousmane Dembele for the remainder of the tournament after suffering a knee injury against Hungary after coming on off the bench.

Other than Dembele, France have no real concerns and will be expected to lineup similar to how they have done in the previous two games with Lucas Hernandez potentially coming back in at left-back for Lucas Digne.

Karim Benzema has struggled so far during the tournament, not able to yet bring his goalscoring ability for Real Madrid back into the national team but manager Deschamps is backing his striker.

“Benzema has a lot of experience and he will have no doubts about himself”, the Bleus head coach told his post-match press conference.

“He has done very good things, but he has lacked a goal. He knows people want him to score, but he knows it’s just about that. He is a striker that needs to score but the essential thing is that he has confidence and that he knows he has mine.”

Should France win the group, they will then play one of the best third-placed teams next Tuesday in Glasgow but should they fall into 2nd, they will travel to Wembley to take on England.

There is still yet a chance they could fall into third place which would mean they would play either the Netherlands or Belgium next Sunday.

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