France routs Norway 4-1 to win World Cup group outright

France finished the group stage with a 4-1 win over Norway on Friday, June 26, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and locked up first place in its World Cup 2026 group. Ousmane Dembélé scored three times and Désiré Doué added the other goal, giving Didier Deschamps a third straight victory in the tournament after wins over Senegal and Iraq.

The scoreline was emphatic, but the response from inside the squad was not. Dembélé, Michael Olise and Guy Stéphan came away from the night with a cautious, calm tone that matched a team intent on projecting control rather than celebration. France has spent the first phase of the tournament building results one by one, and the 4-1 finish in Foxborough fit that pattern.

The route through the group had already pointed toward that discipline. France opened with a 3-1 win over Senegal and then beat Iraq 3-0, giving Deschamps a clean record through three matches. The federation had France listed third in the FIFA rankings on June 11, 2026, and Deschamps has been in charge since the summer of 2012, longer than any other coach in the history of the national team.

The Norway match also carried a historical backdrop. Before kickoff, the French federation pointed to the teams’ previous meetings: France beat Norway 4-0 in 2014, while Norway won 2-1 in Oslo in 2010. This time, the result was driven by Dembélé’s hat trick and Doué’s finish, in a game that had also been framed in advance around the matchup between Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé.

Individual form has sharpened the spotlight around France’s attack. Dembélé, who was named Ballon d’Or 2025 in Paris on Sept. 22, had also been under fresh scrutiny after France’s opener against Senegal on June 17, when Michael Olise was the readers’ top-rated player at 7.6 and Dembélé received 4.2. Olise had also recently matched Dembélé’s total of goals for France, adding another layer to the comparison between the two attackers, even as the group win in Foxborough was treated as a step rather than a finish line.