Olivier Giroud: Target is to top the Euro 2020 Qualifying group

The striker scored the winning penalty in the 79th minute.

France secured a 2-1 victory against Moldova in their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign and that further moves them up to 22 points from nine matches in Group H. Olivier Giroud spoke for a bit after the game, in which he played a vital role as he converted the spot-kick in the 79th minute to ensure that the Frenchmen bagged all three points from the game. With this victory, France has qualified for the European Championship next year but it was a very hard-earned win for Didier Deschamps’ side. Regarding that, Giroud said, "Yeah, every team that we faced in Stade de France they come to play deep and sit back and try to counter-attack. They scored the goal early in the game and obviously we didn’t start the game the way we wanted." "We didn’t put a good rhythm in our game and we missed a bit of aggression and we changed that in the second half and with more solutions upfront because we were quite static in the first half." [KH_ADWORDS type="3" align="center"][/KH_ADWORDS]

Need to finish at the top of the group

Giroud’s goal was also critical in the way that it has completely changed the dynamics of the game as France would now visit Albania and would have the opportunity to win the group altogether. The 33-year-old was asked about the same and he replied, “Yes, it’s definitely the target of the week in this second game, to finish top of the group and to have the opportunity to be in the best pot (in the draw)." France have been quite convincing with their performances in the qualifying stages as they have won seven out of the nine games until now. They drew and lost once and currently are comfortably poised a couple of points ahead of Turkey who are at 20 points from nine matches with six victories to their name. Vadim Rata had notched an early goal for Moldova in the match and it was quite a task for the home side to carve out a victory as the opposition was stringently disciplined to not concede an away goal. However, Rapahel Varane found the back of the net in the 35th minute before Veaceslav Posmac brought down Lucas Digne in the 77th minute and the Frenchmen received a spot-kick. [KH_RELATED_NEWS title="Related News | ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW"][/KH_RELATED_NEWS] Cool as ever, Giroud put the ball past the goalkeeper and this eventually meant that Deschamps’ team was able to notch a victory on a night where their performance was rather insipid and dreary. Regardless of that, they would now have a chance to repeat their heroics for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and do the double with a victory in the Euros scheduled to take place in 2020.