---
title: "England Beats France 6-4 in a Third-Place Playoff That Broke a Record"
description: "England led 4-0 and then watched France score three times in first-half stoppage time. It finished 6-4 in Miami Gardens, and Kylian Mbappé's two goals took him past Lionel Messi as the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history."
category: "Sports"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/sports
author: "Elias Rosen"
published: 2026-07-19T01:29:29.000Z
updated: 2026-07-19T01:29:29.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/england-beats-france-6-4-in-a-third-place-playoff-that-broke-a-record
tags: ["world-cup", "england", "france", "kylian-mbappe", "jude-bellingham"]
---
# England Beats France 6-4 in a Third-Place Playoff That Broke a Record

England led 4-0 and then watched France score three times in first-half stoppage time. It finished 6-4 in Miami Gardens, and Kylian Mbappé's two goals took him past Lionel Messi as the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history.

The third-place playoff is the match nobody wants to play, contested by two teams who spent the previous week being told it does not matter. This one produced ten goals.

England beat France 6-4 in Miami Gardens on Saturday, [holding on after surrendering a four-goal lead's worth of control in the space of about quarter of an hour](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49393769/england-hold-france-all-world-cup-classic).

## Four up, and then not

England were 4-0 ahead through Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two from Bukayo Saka, and the game looked finished before halftime.

It was not. France scored three times in first-half stoppage time, which is a sentence that should not be possible. Kylian Mbappé struck at 45+3, Bradley Barcola at 45+9, and Mbappé again at 45+15. The teams went in at 4-3, and whatever Didier Deschamps had prepared to say at the interval presumably needed rewriting.

The second half turned on a Saka penalty in the 87th minute, which restored England's two-goal cushion and completed his hat trick. Ousmane Dembélé pulled France back within one again, and Jude Bellingham settled it in stoppage time.

Bellingham's goal made him the first Englishman to score seven goals in a single World Cup campaign, a record that in a tournament England lost in the semifinals will be remembered more fondly than the campaign itself.

## Mbappé passes Messi

The individual record was the more consequential outcome. Mbappé's two goals were his ninth and tenth of this tournament and took his career World Cup total to 22, [moving him past Lionel Messi as the leading scorer in the men's World Cup](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49257085/kylian-mbappe-lionel-messi-all-world-cup-goal-record).

There is an awkwardness to where it happened. Mbappé set the record in the consolation match, hours before Messi plays in the final, and Messi can reclaim the record on Sunday by scoring twice against Spain. A record broken on Saturday afternoon in a game that officially decides third place may not survive the weekend.

That possibility does not diminish the achievement so much as frame it. Mbappé has reached 22 across three tournaments, a rate no one in the game's history has matched, and he is 27. Whatever the number is on Sunday night, he will have most of another decade to add to it.

## The game itself

Ten goals in a World Cup match is close to unheard of in the modern era, and it happened because both teams played as though the result carried no weight, which is precisely the reason third-place playoffs are sometimes the most entertaining football of a tournament and never the most important.

England will take a win over France in any format. France will reflect that they were four down inside an hour of football and still came within one goal of the most improbable recovery the fixture has produced. Neither will remember it for long. The tournament ends on Sunday at MetLife Stadium, where Spain play Argentina for the trophy that actually counts.

## Sources

- [England hold off France in all-time World Cup classic](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49393769/england-hold-france-all-world-cup-classic)
- [Mbappé equals and passes Messi's all-time World Cup goal record](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49257085/kylian-mbappe-lionel-messi-all-world-cup-goal-record)