‘There’s a reason he’s earning $200m’: Mbappe teaches Atkinson a lesson

Fellow defender Kye Rowles empathised with Atkinson and Aziz Behich, who had his hands just as full with Ousmane Dembele on the other side of the pitch.

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“They’re obviously quality players but Aziz and Natty held a good account of themselves all game,” Rowles said. “It’s not a nice thing to have those two running at you for 90 minutes, but I thought they’d done well, just their quality shone through in the end.”

Mbappe had a hand in three of France’s four goals, but in truth had hand, foot and head in everything that happened on the pitch in a dazzling display. For the goal that put France ahead, he and Adrien Rabiot combined to strip Atkinson after a heavy touch before Rabiot laid on a tap-in goal for Olivier Giroud.

“I’ve played that scenario 50 times over, and I could probably come up with 50 different solutions.” Atkinson said. “But that’s football. I’m disappointed, I’ll take full responsibility for the second goal. The beauty is I’ve got a game in three days to fix it.

“Anything can happen. You see what Saudi did do against Argentina. Obviously, we’ve come against the world champions, and there’s a reason for that – they’re a good football team. We can take confidence from the way we played early on.”

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Australia shocked the French with the first goal, scored by Craig Goodwin and made by the sort of robust play Arnold had preached. But it lasted 18 minutes. However physical Australia might try to be, France were their equal and better. “I thought we started the game very well,” Arnold said. “[But] physically, they were just so much bigger, faster and stronger than us today.”

Rowles provided an insight into how it is to square up to the reigning World Cup holders in full flight. “They’re slow, slow … they kind of lull you into this false sense of security,” he said, “and then they just hit you, pretty fast. When they cross, it’s just the perfect ball every time, pretty much – that’s what quality players do.”

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