Emirates News Agency – Defense grabs the limelight in France’s victory over Ireland, and Depay is close to a historic title with the Netherlands

ABU DHABI, 28th March, 2020 (WAM) – While the French offensive line captured most of the lights during the first match of the French national football team in the qualifiers for the upcoming European Nations Cup (Euro 2024), goalkeeper Mike Maynan captured a lot of lights and attention during the team’s second match in the same qualifiers.
The dangerous French striker, Kylian Mbappe, scored two goals in the first match of the qualifiers to lead the French team to a great victory 4-0 over his Dutch counterpart, while Maenan played the most prominent role in the victory of the second team in the qualifiers by blocking more than one dangerous ball that helped the team to emerge victorious 1-0 at its host. Ireland on Monday.
The French national team had great difficulty facing the Irish defense during the first half, then the only goal of the match came with the signing of French defender Benjamin Pavard 5 minutes after the start of the second half.
After that, Maynan tackled more than one serious attack in light of the Irish national team’s uprising and its attempts to adjust the result through counter-attacks.
Thus, the defense line, led by Pavard and goalkeeper Mainan, won the greatest amount of public and media acclaim, in light of the great contribution to winning 3 precious points in the team’s playoffs.
The brilliance of the defense and Maynan contributed to repeating an achievement for the French national team that had not been achieved for nearly 4 decades. Where the team achieved victory in 5 consecutive matches in the World Cup and European Championship qualifiers without conceding for the first time since it achieved this during the period from November 1981 to December 1984, noting that the five matches during that period were all in the 1982 and 1986 World Cup qualifiers, while the team played Euro 1984 without qualification as the representative of the host country.
In another match in the same group, the Dutch national team regained its balance after a 4-0 defeat in the first round against France and defeated Gibraltar 3-0 in a match that witnessed a distinguished number for Memphis Depay, 29, the Dutch striker; Where the player scored the first goal for the team in the match, becoming the third player to score 5 or more goals for the Dutch national team against a specific team during the current century.
Depay raised his score with the Dutch national team against Gibraltar to 5 goals, compared to 6 goals for his compatriot Robin van Persie against the Hungarian national team and 5 goals for the other Dutch striker Claas Jan Huntelaar against San Marino, according to the European Union for the game (UEFA).
Depay also took a new step in the search for the title of the historic top scorer for the Dutch national team, raising his score to 44 points, a difference of only 6 goals from Robin van Persie, who holds the title of historical scorer so far with 50 goals in the history of his participation with the Dutch national team.