{"id":39425,"date":"2026-07-13T10:49:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T08:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&p=39425"},"modified":"2026-07-13T10:49:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T08:49:56","slug":"france-do-not-fear-spain-but-respect-their-quality-players","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/france-do-not-fear-spain-but-respect-their-quality-players\/","title":{"rendered":"‘France do not fear Spain but respect their quality, players’"},"content":{"rendered":"
France are not afraid of Spain going into their World Cup semi-final on Tuesday, defender Ibrahima Konate said on Sunday, but they \u200bare conscious of their opponents’ quality and their near-perfect backline.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Spain have conceded only one \u200cgoal in the entire tournament to reach the last four in search of a second World Cup title.<\/div>\n
“You cannot fear \u200banyone,” France centre-back Konate told a press conference. “We will now prepare as best \u2060as possible and hope the result in the end will favour us.”<\/div>\n
\n“Spain are an exceptional \u200bteam, with a lot of individual quality, so we won’t be focusing on just one player \u200beven though Lamine (Yamal) is a great player,” said Konate, who had a brief substitute appearance in the win over Norway in their final group match.<\/div>\n
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Dayot Upamecano and William Saliba have been France’s starting centre-backs, as the tournament \u200bfavourites eye their fifth World Cup final.<\/div>\n
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The French have reached four of the last seven World \u200bCup finals. Should they take part in the July 19 showdown in New York, they will sustain the \u200ccomparison \u2060with West Germany, arguably the ultimate tournament nation with four finals between 1974 and 1990.<\/div>\n
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But Konate said the French were not wasting any thoughts on what might be.<\/div>\n
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“We are staying humble, we won’t fall into that trap,” he said.<\/div>\n
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They will need to find a way to break down \u200bthis World Cup’s most effective \u200bbackline, as well \u2060as contain as much as possible Lamine’s runs down the wings.<\/div>\n
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“I would not say ‘fear’ but we are conscious of their quality,” said fellow France \u200bcentre-back Maxence Lacroix. “They have won all their matches (except a 0-0 draw against \u200bCape Verde \u2060in the group), so we respect them. They have high quality players but we want to win.”<\/div>\n
\nTop of the list is Spain winger Lamine, who has earned praise from his coach for keeping \u2060opponents’ defenders \u200bbusy as teammate use the spaces created.
\n“We will defend well, \u200bthe best,” Lacroix said. “Lamine is a very good player and he has shown he can hurt teams at this World \u200bCup. We will do the work that is needed.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
–Reuters–<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":39154,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-39425","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Spain have conceded only one \u200cgoal in the entire tournament to reach the last four in search of a second World Cup title.","published_date":"","news_description":"Spain have conceded only one \u200cgoal in the entire tournament to reach the last four in search of a second World Cup title.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39426,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/39425\/revisions\/39426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=39425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}