Euro 2022: France and Grace Geyoro make history after electric win over Italy | OneFootball

France set a new European Championship record on Saturday night following their blistering 5-1 win over Italy.

Corinne Diacre’s side enjoyed the perfect start to their Euro 2022 campaign under the lights of the New York Stadium in Rotherham.

All five goals from Les Bleues came in the first half of the match — something that had never been seen before in the history of the tournament.

It took France just nine minutes to get off the mark and open up the floodgates against a struggling Italy.

Grace Geyoro scored the opener before Marie-Antoinette Katoto bagged her country’s second just three minutes later.

After a thunderbolt strike from Delphine Cascarino to make it three, Geyoro popped up with two more goals inside five minutes to make history for both herself and France.

The 25-year-old helped her side notch a huge 5-0 lead at half-time, setting a new record for the highest amount of goals a country has scored in the first half of any Euro match.

Geyoro also became the first player in the competition’s history to score a first half hat-trick, and the fifth player overall to net three goals in one fixture. She joins Line Videkull, Marianne Pettersen, Angélique Roujas, and Jodie Taylor on this exclusive list.

Geyoro’s historic hat-trick came on her 50th appearance for the French national team.

French domination

It may have been a tale of two halves but France were in control from start to finish.

After their electric five-goal thriller in the first half, they seemed to ease off the gas in the final 45 minutes. This allowed Italy to score their first goal of Euro 2022 as Martina Piemonte got one back via a header, but it would prove to be merely a consolation.

Despite not finding another goal in the second half, France looked calm in control and comfortably saw out the fixture to put themselves in excellent form heading into the rest of the group stage matches.

Piemonte’s goal came after Italy escaped the first sending off of the tournament. Captain Sara Game was initially given a straight red card following a high challenge on Geyoro but VAR overturned the decision and replaced it with a yellow.

France had a couple of goalscoring opportunities towards the end of the match but settled for the 5-1 full-time result.

They will face Belgium on Thursday while Group D opponents Italy prepare to take on Iceland.

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