England beat France 6-4 in the World Cup third-place playoff at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens on Saturday, in a match that stopped resembling a competitive fixture some time in the first half and never recovered its shape.

England were 4-0 up at the interval through Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and two goals from Bukayo Saka, ESPN reported. France then scored four times in the second half: Kylian Mbappé in the 48th minute, Bradley Barcola in the 54th, Mbappé again in the 57th, and Ousmane Dembélé later. Saka completed his hat-trick from the penalty spot in the 87th minute, and Jude Bellingham added the sixth.

A game with nothing riding on it

Third-place playoffs are widely disliked by the players required to appear in them, and they tend to produce exactly this: open football from two teams with no reason to protect a result. Ten goals is an unusually high total for any World Cup fixture, and the pattern of the match, a four-goal lead surrendered to within one before being restored, is closer to what happens when defending becomes optional than to a contest between two of the best sides in the tournament.

That does not make it worthless. Both squads contained players who will define the next four years, and the match gave a considerable crowd a spectacle. It simply should not be read as evidence about either team's quality.

Mbappé and the scoring race

Mbappé's two goals continued a tournament that has put him in contention for the Golden Boot and moved him up the list of all-time World Cup scorers. He passed Miroslav Klose's long-standing mark of 16 goals earlier in the competition.

Where exactly he now stands is less clear than the headlines suggest. Outlets have published different career totals for him in the past 24 hours, and different figures for Lionel Messi, who leads the historic list and who plays in Sunday's final against Spain. Because Messi can still add to his tally and Mbappé cannot, the all-time record is not settled tonight whatever the current numbers are. We are not publishing a specific career total until the discrepancy resolves.

Deschamps departs

The match was Didier Deschamps's last in charge of France, ending a tenure that began in 2012 and included a World Cup win in 2018. Few international managers have lasted as long or achieved as much, and ending on a 6-4 defeat in a fixture neither side wanted is an odd footnote to that record rather than a judgment on it.

Thomas Tuchel's England finish third, their best World Cup result since winning the tournament in 1966. Whether third place counts as progress or as another near miss is the argument that will now run in England, and it is a genuinely open one: a semi-final exit is both the furthest the team has gone in six decades and, again, not the final.

The tournament concludes on Sunday, when Argentina meet Spain.