France Score Late to Top Nigeria

 2-0 

France have certainly responded to their previous World Cup performance where they did not make it out of group play.  This time around France won Group E with wins over Honduras and Switzerland plus a draw to Ecuador.  Nigeria finish second in Group F to Argentina with only one win over Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Nigeria are the champions of Africa though and came out confident against France in their meeting in the round of 16.

Both teams were close to scoring in the first-half with Emmanuel Emenike actually putting the ball in the net.  Emenike attacked a cross and got the shot past French keeper Lloris, but he was offside and the goal did not count.  Paul Pogba also came close to scoring for France when he connected with a volley.  The shot went straight to keeper Enyeama who made the save and the first-half ended with no score.

Not long after half-time Nigeria were forced to make a change when Ogenyi Onazi was fouled by Matuidi.  Onazi got his ankle stepped on hard and had to come out on a stretcher.  France on the other hand made a tactical change and removed an ineffective Giroud for Antoine Griezmann.  This allowed Benzema to play as the lone striker and late in the match France took the lead.

A corner-kick was sent into the box by Valbuena and Nigerian keeper Enyeama came off his line to claim it.  He misjudged the cross though and could only get a finger tip on the ball.  The tipped ball went right to Pogba at the far-post and he scored with a free header on an open net (79').

Nigeria did not have much of a response to the late goal and a bit of bad luck gave France a second goal in stoppage-time.  Valbuena fired a cross towards the near-post in the direction of Griezmann.  Defender Yobo and keeper Enyeama tried to intervene on the attack, but the ball took an unlikely deflection off Yobo and ended up an Own-goal for Nigeria (90 +1').

France were the better team and definitely have more depth in their bench than the African side.  Nigeria played solid for nearly eighty minutes, but could not get on the scoreboard today.  France will have to wait until later today to find out if it will be Germany or the other African team Algeria that they will play in the quarter-finals.