By CNN
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It was a night that will live long in the memory for France fans as Les Bleus thrashed 10-man Gibraltar by an astonishing 14-0 in their European Championship qualifying match, with Kylian Mbappé scoring a hat trick.
This was the world’s No. 2-ranked team playing against a country ranked 198 in the world and the gulf between the two was evident on the pitch.
It was the biggest winning margin in the history of the qualifiers, surpassing Germany’s 13-0 thumping of San Marino in 2006, and marked the first time a European team had scored 14 goals in a World Cup or European Championship qualifying match, according to Reuters.
Mbappé’s long-range effort to complete his hat trick was the pick of France’s goals in the Allianz Riviera, Nice, on a night where seven goals were scored in each half.
Warren Zaïre-Emery, aged 17 years, eight months and 11 days, also made history as he became France’s youngest player since 1914 and marked his debut with a first-half goal.
The night started badly for Gibraltar when Ethan Santos put the ball into his own net after just three minutes and from there on things unraveled for the visitors as Santos was shown a red card in the 18th minute for a foul on Zaïre-Emery, which ended the teenager’s participation.
Marcus Thuram, Jonathan Clauss, Youssouf Fofana, Adrien Rabiot, Ousmane Dembélé all scored for France, while Olivier Giroud and Kingsley Coman got two goals apiece.
“Being down to 10, already with 11 it’s complicated for them, but it doesn’t take away the credit for us even if we could have been more efficient, it’s as much about respecting the opponent as scoring goals,” France manager Didier Deschamps said, per Reuters. “Fourteen is not bad.”
France had 39 attempts on goal, 19 of which were on target, while Gibraltar failed to muster a chance.
France, already qualified for Euro 2024 in Germany, is top of Group B while a winless Gibraltar is bottom on zero points without having yet scored a goal during qualification.
