France stand on the verge of a historic hat-trick after Antoine Griezmann’s Puma Evospeeds struck twice to eliminate Thomas Muller’s Adidas X’s and Germany from EU-RO 2016.
They are now the first host nation to reach two Euros finals and after claiming the title 1984 and a World Cup in 1998, and just 90 minutes away from sealing a famous triple as hosts.
The Atletico Madrid man once again proved himself the man for the big occasion. He is now the tournament’s top scorer with six goals, five of which have arrived in the all-important knockout round.
And he came up big in Marseille when his country needed him most. Germany had de-feated the hosts at the semi-final stage of a major tournament in all six of their oppor-tunities to do so.
Their hopes of making it seven depended heavily on a performance from Bayern Mu-nich’s Muller, who had yet to find his boots in France.
With Mario Gomez missing on Thursday, Muller was pushed through the middle as a false no.9, but it did little to change his fortunes and he exits the tournament without a single goal to his name.
Griezmann was more involved throughout, collecting 58 touches of the ball to Muller’s 37. The Frenchman hit more passes, had more shots and tested the goalkeeper more frequently than Muller as he could do nothing to prevent Germany bowing out.
France took the lead right on half time when Griezmann stepped up to coolly slot his penalty past Manuel Neuer, who had become the hero of the previous round after stop-ping kicks to see his side past Italy in a shootout.
As the reigning world champions tried to respond in the second period, the pitch opened up and Griezman and France found more and more space to counter.
And the hosts sealed their win with just under twenty minutes left when, after Neuer failed to clear a Paul Pogba cross, Griezmann reacted quickly to inventively stab home his finish from close range.
His showing has helped keep the Puma Evospeed climb to fifth overall in the INTER-SPORT boot ranking at Euro 2016 with a rating of 8.7/10, closing the gap on Muller’s Adidas X’s which remain second only to the perfect 10 of the Nike Mercurial.
The INTERSPORT Football Boot Ranking has been created to empower football fans to choose the best available boot for their needs.
The two boots sit in the same positions when restricted to forwards in France, with the likes of Gareth Bale, Alvaro Morata and Nani more than making up for the lack of goals from Muller.
Ahead of the Euro 2016 final on Sunday, the Mercurial currently leads the rankings over-all.
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