Four years ago France ended one of the greatest tournament runs of all time by defeating an upstart Morocco side making Africa's first semifinal in World Cup history.

Now Morocco is trying to prove they're among the world's elite with a rematch against France after the two sides won their Round of 16 matches yesterday.

MOROCCO 3, CANADA 0

Canada for much of the first half and certainly for the first thirty minutes were the better side in this game. But they were unable to turn that positive spell into a lead before halftime and Morocco made they pay for it immediately after the restart.

Azzedine Ounahi slotted home a training ground free kick routine at the top of the box in the 50th minute and then scored a brace with a counter a half hour late while Soufiane Rahimi piled on deep into stoppage time to give Morocco a decisive win on the scoreboard.

But for large stages of this game, the Canucks were taking it to The Atlas Lions. While each team generated a meager xG total just above 0.80, the bulk of Morocco's came on their final counter from Rahimi. Sadly we'll never know what this came could have been if say Tani Oluwaseyi's 10th minute shot from the center of the box had gone in.

Credit to Morocco's Montreal born keeper Yassine Bounou who made three saves on the day for his shutout and is having a much better tournament than his counterpart Maxime Crepeau though the Orlando City keeper could do little about the three goals as the Canadians rightly pushed forward in vain to get back into the game.

It was always going to be a tougher task for Canada to make a deeper run than their tri-host counterparts in lieu of various injuries to star players Alphonso Davies and Ismael Kone especially after Switzerland topped their group. But Jesse Marsch has done a phenomenal job with this team and got them a deserved first knockout win so this tournament can't be considered anything but a major success overall for them.

FRANCE 1, PARAGUAY 0

This was not a soccer match, it was a 15 round championship brawl fittingly decided by a penalty.

Kylian Mbappe dispatched a 70th minute penalty after VAR rightly intervened on an uncalled Diego Gomez foul on Desire Doue in the box moments before but there was very little soccer in this game.

Part of that is a testament to Paraguay's low block but probably most of it was Paraguay's detrimental game plan to avoid playing any soccer at all for most of the day which is a shame because they have attacking talent and just didn't deploy it.

France's official tally was a 5-for-15 shooting day but half of their 1.45 xG generated came from the Mpabbe penalty. Paraguay mustered just five shots with only one being on target and most of their attempts outside the area. They also managed just 13 fouls and somehow no yellow cards in their anti-soccer crusade.

UPCOMING MATCHES

France and Morocco will stage their 2022 Semifinal rematch at Gillette Boston Stadium on Thursday July 9 at 4pm US Eastern. The FRA-MOR quarterfinal is opposite Spain-Portugal and USA-Belgium in the top half of the tournament bracket.