England won the third-place match 6-4 at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, a scoreline that flatters neither side's defending while doing full justice to the spectacle. They were four goals to the good before France had scored once, and yet Didier Deschamps's side made it genuinely uncomfortable before Jude Bellingham settled the matter in the eighth minute of stoppage time. Third place, then, and bronze medals, but England will leave Miami with considerably more than that.
Declan Rice set the tone inside three minutes. Picking the ball up in midfield and driving forward, he finished himself to give England a lead that felt both deserved and ominous for the French. At 18 minutes it was two, Ezri Konsa bundling in from Rice's delivery to score his first international goal. France looked disorganised, their defensive shape porous in a way that the tournament's third-place consolation fixture tends to encourage.
Bukayo Saka then took the game away from them. He converted Marcus Rashford's pass to make it three on 37 minutes, then turned provider and finisher in one chaotic first-half passage, adding a second just before the whistle to send England in with a 4-0 lead. Saka had three assists and two goals from open play by that point, with the third still to come. The performance was, by any reasonable measure, one of the finest by an England player at a World Cup.
France needed a response after the break and Kylian Mbappé provided one with minimal delay. On 48 minutes, set up by Michael Olise, he pulled one back. Olise found him again at 66 minutes to make it 3-4. In between, Bradley Barcola, introduced at half-time alongside Ousmane Dembélé, scored the second after Mbappé's assist. Suddenly France had momentum and England had something to protect, a situation they have historically handled with mixed results.
Saka resolved any anxiety on 87 minutes, converting from the spot to restore the two-goal cushion. It looked to be that. Then Dembélé scored deep into added time from Dayot Upamecano's pass to set up a frantic finish, before Bellingham, on as a substitute, killed the game with virtually the final action. France had gone from 0-4 down to 4-5 behind in the space of 45 minutes; in the end it was not enough.
The tactical picture is worth noting. England controlled possession (54 per cent) and were more efficient in front of goal, scoring six from 11 shots on target. France generated 19 total shot attempts, identically matched by England, but their expected goals of 2.87 against a return of four tells the story of a team who needed to take their chances. England's expected goals figure of 2.58 makes their six look extraordinary, though the quality of Saka's contribution skews that number considerably.
France's half-time changes transformed their attacking threat but came far too late to salvage anything more than pride. Mbappé finished with two goals and an assist, Olise with two assists from the right, and Dembélé with a goal from the bench. For Deschamps, whose team had been tactically overrun for the first 45 minutes, the second half offered some consolation. Not much, but some.
England's back four, reshuffled from the semi-final, held firm for an hour before France found their rhythm. Konsa was the unlikely first-half hero alongside the excellent Marc Guéhi, and Djed Spence was enterprising throughout from right back. Rice ran the midfield for large portions of the game and produced numbers (one goal, one assist) that belonged on a fantasy football leaderboard rather than a third-place match.
Third is third. But England scored six goals against France, Saka got a hat-trick, and Rice bossed the best midfield France could field. On the evidence of this match, Thomas Tuchel's side head home with reason to believe something considerably better than bronze is within reach.