1998 FIFA World Cup Final penalties after Italy's Luigi Di Biagio struck his penalty onto the crossbar. In the semi-finals, France faced tournament surprise Croatia. After a goal-less first half, Croatia took the lead in the first minute of the second half through Davor Šuker, his fifth goal of the tournament. France responded immediately with Lilian Thuram scoring his first international goal. Thuram then added a second twenty minutes from time to send France to their first ever World Cup final. The match ended in controversy however when Laurent Blanc was sent off after a skirmish with Croatia's Slaven Bilić. Bilić had sunk down to
Germany at the FIFA World Cup Germany played the favoured Hungarian Golden Team in the first round of the tournament and suffered a 3-8 loss, their highest World Cup defeat to this day. In the final, Hungary was up by two goals after only eight minutes, so it came as a surprise that the German team not only quickly equalized but turned the game around in the 84th minute with a goal scored by Helmut Rahn. The strongly contested game between Germany and host nation England went into extra time after a score of 2-2 after 90 minutes. Geoff Hurst's goal in the 101st minute is