For 65 minutes, France looked like a team still finding its rhythm. Then Kylian Mbappe decided the wait was over, and by full time he had rewritten a piece of his country’s history along the way.
France beat Senegal 3-1 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on June 17, 2026, in their Group I opener at the World Cup. Mbappe scored twice, in the 66th minute and deep into stoppage time, with substitute Bradley Barcola adding a third in the 82nd minute. Ibrahim Mbaye pulled one back for Senegal in the dying moments, but Mbappe’s second goal, a 30-yard strike, moved him past Olivier Giroud as France’s all-time leading scorer with 58.
Here is the direct version. Final score 3-1. Mbappe opened the scoring in the 66th minute, Barcola doubled the lead in the 82nd, Mbaye replied for Senegal in the 5th minute of stoppage time, and Mbappe sealed it with a long-range effort one minute later. France finished with 1.79 expected goals to Senegal’s 0.53, a gap that fairly describes how comfortable the second half eventually became.
For long stretches, though, comfortable was not the word.
Senegal matched France for large parts of the first half and came close to taking the lead themselves. Nicolas Jackson smashed an effort off the post in the 25th minute, and Ismaila Sarr fired over the bar right before halftime, two warnings that France’s stars had not yet found their gear.
Mbappe himself was left fuming just before the breakthrough, convinced he should have been awarded a penalty after a collision with Sadio Mane. The decision stood, and he simply went and scored instead.
Here’s the thing once France found the opener, the match changed completely.
Michael Olise threaded an exquisite pass through Senegal’s defense in the 66th minute, and Mbappe finished calmly to break the deadlock. Sixteen minutes later, Adrien Rabiot waited and waited before sliding a perfectly weighted through ball into the path of Barcola, who had just come on as a substitute. Barcola drifted across the box and dinked a finish over Edouard Mendy to make it 2-0.
Make no mistake, that second goal should have ended any doubt about the result.
Senegal had other ideas in the closing minutes. Iliman Ndiaye, also just introduced from the bench, picked out Mbaye in the 90th-plus-5th minute, and the substitute sat down his marker before smashing a finish into the goal that Mike Maignan probably should have saved.
It lasted barely sixty seconds. Mbappe picked up the ball thirty yards from goal, spun away from his marker, and slammed a shot into the top corner to restore France’s two-goal cushion and complete the most significant night of his international career.
France move to two wins from two. Senegal, who matched the better side for almost an hour, leave New Jersey with nothing, and with a clear sense of how close they came to making this a very different story.