Sweden wary of French firepower, as Norway take on Ivory Coast

Dubai: The World Cup group stage produced a record-breaking 215 goals across 72 matches, averaging three goals per game, setting a new tournament record, according to Fifa. France, Germany and the Netherlands finished as the highest-scoring teams in the group stage with 10 goals each and with 31 matches in the knockouts, the goals are unlikely to dry up anytime soon.

On Tuesday night, Kylian Mbappe’s France take on Sweden in their Round of 32 match. As one of the pre-tournament favourites, the Les Bleus are riding on a rich vein of form, winning all three matches with Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele both scoring four times so far.

Mbappe began his campaign with a brace against Senegal before scoring another two goals in France's next group-stage match against Iraq. Although he did not score against Norway where Dembele scored a hat-trick, the France captain played a key creative role by providing two assists as France impressed with their attacking display.

Such has been Mbappe’s impact so far that Brazil great Ronaldo Nazario compared the France captain's style of play to his own during his prime years. "His playing style reminds me of myself at my peak. He is one of the greatest players in football today and a natural heir to the legends of the game," Ronaldo said.

The attacking brilliance of the French side has already sent alarm bells ringing in the Swedish camp with Viktor Gyokeres warning his side on Sunday that they will have to be "almost perfect" defensively if they are to cause an upset.

Speaking at Sweden's training base in Dallas, Arsenal striker Gyokeres made no attempt to play down the scale of the task facing his team. "We will have to be at our best, we have to do our defensive organisation almost perfect and then of course to take the chances we will get," he said.

Sweden squeezed into the knockouts, thrashing Tunisia 5-1 and then losing to the Netherlands by the same scoreline.

Graham Potter's side, who needed to go through the playoffs to reach North America, edged through the group with a 1-1 draw against Japan.

Despite an erratic campaign, Gyokeres said: "We have our confidence. I think we have to believe in ourselves.

"We've seen in a lot of games this tournament that you can win games (as underdogs). You can do well even though you play against the best teams.

"Of course we might be the underdogs, but we still believe in ourselves."

Prior to that mouth-watering clash, Erling Haaland’s Norway will take the field and fancy their chances against Ivory Coast in their Round of 32 clash. The prolific forward posted clips from his training session, captioning it "Knockout mode loading," as Norway intensified their preparations ahead of the high-stakes fixture.

Haaland has been one of the star performers at the ongoing World Cup, having netted braces in both of his games. With a brace against Senegal, his last outing, the Manchester City striker became only the sixth player in World Cup history to score multiple goals in each of his first two appearances at the tournament.

Ivory Coast, though, will be no pushovers and will be hoping that Norway’s 4-1 defeat against France in their final group match would have derailed their momentum just that bit. The African side beat Ecuador and Curacao and only narrowly lost out to Germany.

Ecuador take on co-hosts Mexico in the third match of the night.