(sabasports report) The French men’s football team got off to a good start with a 1-0 win over Austria in the first round of Group D of the European Championship. The man of the match award went to 33-year-old N’Golo Kante after Kylian Mbappe’s cross led to Maximilian Wober’s own header. Kanter ran 11.52km, the most of any player in the game, and earned a game-high rating of 7.3.
According to German statistics, the French team is worth 1.23 billion euros, second only to England. Of the 25-man squad, only Kante is from a team in a non-European top-five league, playing for Jeddah United in the Saudi league.
Kante left Chelsea last summer to play in Saudi Arabia and made 42 appearances as Jeddah’s main midfielder last season. In the end, coach Didier Deschamps pushed back and recalled Kante, 33, to the national team. Kante last played for France in a 2-1 defeat to Denmark in the Nations League on June 3, 2022.