France 1 Peru 0: Kylian Mbappe’s poached first-half effort enough as French sneak to another tight win

KYLIAN MBAPPE became France’s baby faced assassin as Les Blues youngest goalscorer at the World Cup.

The superstar teenager claimed a personal landmark while firing his country into the last 16 and sending Peru packing.

Mbappe is just 19 years and 183 days old and was not even born when David Trezeguet scored at France 1998 aged 20.

Ironically, Trezeguet was guest of honour here to see his record snatched away from him as France turned on the style but still only scraped a narrow victory against the plucky South Americans.

And that came when Mbappe was left free to poke home a shot from team-mate Olivier Giroud which took a wild ricochet off defender Alberto Rodriguez after 34 minutes of virtual one way traffic and extravagant showboating by the new kid on le block.

Mbappe’s loan at Paris Saint-Germain is about to become permanent for around £190million and against Peru he gave the sort of performance which showed why he commands such a fee.

And alongside Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud they put on a display to lift the French out of the doldrums of a sloppy opening game win over Australia.

Giroud was recalled to the starting line up with Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann on either flank and France mounted four serious threats on goal before the deadlock was broken.

Paul Pogba, Griezmann and defender Raphael Varane all went close.

But while Mbappe scored with a simple tap-in, his tricks and flicks, which included a so-called ‘Ronaldo chop’ where he flicked the ball through his own leg, added an exhilarating dimension to France’s overall show.

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Gutsy Peru hit back when captain Paolo Guerrero turned Samuel Umtiti and hit a low shot which forced a save from Tottenham’s French keeper Hugo Lloris making his 100th international appearance.

And Pedro Aquino hit the corner of the upright in the second half as Peru refused to lie down, backed by almost the entire 32,879 crowd in the Ekaterinburg Central Stadium.

Luis Advincula had a ferocious drive graze the bar in the 65th minute and France were under the cosh with Peru fighting for their lives and hoping to prolong their dreams at least until their third game.

The incessant Spanish chorus of voices, trumpets, Latin cow bells and whistles provided the soundtrack to a breathless match but Peru’s first World Cup finals since 1982 is over after just two matches and two defeats.

They plugged away until the very end but could not manage to breakthrough, score a goal and steal the limelight from Mbappe.

France’s showman was substituted in the 75th minute - well, with this being an 8pm kick off local time it was probably the youngster’s bedtime.