The story

France have won 12 of their 14 most recent World Cup matches and scored first in 9 of their last 11 at the tournament, while Iraq have failed to win five of their last six matches and have not scored an early goal in nine of their last ten. Kylian Mbappé leads France in both average xG (0.56) and xGOT (1.23) across their last ten World Cup matches, with Michael Olise recording the highest average player rating of 8.81 in that same span. Under 3.5 goals have been recorded in 68 of the last 82 meetings between these two sides.