1998 FIFA World Cup

France , officially the French Republic , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands... located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km , just behind that of the United States . Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world.
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The 1998 FIFA World Cup Final was a football match that was played on 12 July 1998 at the Stade de France in St-Denis to determine the winner of the... 1998 FIFA World Cup a global football tournament held every four years. The final was contested by Brazil, who were the defending champions having won the FIFA World Cup four years earlier in 1994, and the host nation France, who had reached the final of the tournament for the first time. France won the match 3–0 to claim the World Cup for the first time, with the timing of the match two days before Bastille Day adding to the significance of the victory. Zinedine Zidane, who was named man of the match, scored twice before half-time and Emmanuel Petit added a third goal in the last minute. The match had an attendance in the region of 75,000. Both sides had suffered mixed fortunes on the route to the final. Brazil made it out of the group stage with 6 points from three matches, with one defeat at the hands of Norway. After a 4–1 win over Chile and a 3–2 success against Denmark, they reached the final with a penalty-shootout victory over the Netherlands.
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