Chelsea’s forward, Oliver Giroud continued his fine run for France midweek when he scored a brace in the international friendly against Ukraine in a match France won 7-1. Giroud’s brace takes his goal tally for the French National team to 42 which is just nine adrift of Thierry Henry’s record. Henry, one of the biggest football stars to have come out of France scored a total of 51 goals for France before quitting international football in 2010. Thierry Henry, it would be noted, won the World Cup with France in 1998, while Giroud achieved the same feat at the Russia 2018 Mundial. Giroud has made 100 international appearances for France.
His goals against Ukraine saw him gallop past another France legend Michel Platini who before now was France’s second highest goal scorer. “I feel a lot of pride, it’s a great honour for me and I’m happy it happened for my 100th cap,” Giroud told French TV channel TF1 after the game against Ukraine, adding “I’m happy I did it in front of Shevchenko, he was one of my favourite players, if not my favourite player when I was a teenager.” Football fans have of late been treated to a harvest of goals both at club and national team levels, with the most bizarre being the 7-2 bashing of EPL defending champions, Liverpool by lowly rated Aston Villa. Another EPL giants Manchester United also fell at home by 6-1 to Jose Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspur last week.
Before the latest round of results, La Liga giants, Barcelona were beaten 8-2 by Bayern as the German giants went all the way to emerge European champions. The defeat led to a crisis in Barcelona that almost led to the exit of Lionel Messi, who found it difficult to swallow the pill of the heavy defeat.
