Exhibition Match: France 🇫🇷 vs. Columbia 🇨🇴 (Mar. 2026)
The atmosphere inside the stadium was electric.
I went to watch the France vs. Columbia friendly match in Landover, Maryland on Sun. 3/29/26. This was an exhibition match as part of Road to 2026, which were a series of exhibition matches leading up to the FIFA World Cup 2026 sponsored by Turkish Airlines. Right now the World Cup is in full swing and I’ll write a more extensive blog post about it in due time. In this post however, I wanted to reflect on the France vs. Columbia exhibition match which happened a few months ago. This was totally a dream come true for me and I never expected something like this to happen! I saw the tickets randomly one night as I was doing a search for World Cup tickets. Once I saw the exhibition match included France, I jumped on it immediately. I asked a friend to also go with me and it was quite a cool experience overall.
France is one of the only European countries I’ve been to. France is also a soccer (or football in any non-U.S. country) powerhouse and it was always a dream of mine to see them play. I remember the 1998 World Cup as well as the final match between France vs. Brazil distinctly. I was too young and don’t remember seeing any full matches per se, but I heard about players such as Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry and used to play them on the PC video game FIFA 98. I also used to play soccer as a young person, so it was always my first love. Back to the story! On the day of the game, my friend and I met in Silver Spring around one hour before the 3:00 PM ET match start and we motored our way over to Landover. On the way there, we did NOT account for traffic going to the game! The traffic was so dense on I-95 that it took quite a while to get to the actual venue. Then after getting to our parking spot, there was a walk to the stadium + a perimeter search to find the right gate for security and ticketing. It was quite the adventure, especially given there were SO many people there. After we finally made it in, we were already around 26 min late to the match, but thankfully the score was still 0-0 at that point. The stadium was overwhelmingly Columbian supporters, and it seemed like the whole Columbian community from the D.M.V. was present at the game! They were loud, passionate, and deeply loyal supporters of Columbia.
France was playing its B-squad that day, meaning most of the starters and key players were resting for the game. Columbia I think was also playing their B-squad. As the game was still 0-0 when we arrived, we decided to stay at a bar area and observe the game, without going to our seats yet which were bleacher seats at the stadium’s top level. I remembered the game picked up quickly as soon as we arrived; I was also extremely happy that we did not miss any goals. France was dominating and literally within 10 minutes of us watching the match, Désiré Doué of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) scored a goal (France 1 - Columbia 0)! It was quite amazing that we witnessed the first goal so quickly; Doué is an extremely talented young player with PSG and this foreshadowed what was to come. The game progressed towards half-time with France dominating ball possession and chaining together crisp passes and chaining together sequences. Then right before half-time, Marcus Thuram of Inter Milan scored a powerful header (France 2 - Columbia 0)! This was a dream come true for me and I went into half-time super excited.
During half-time, we walked around Northwest Stadium and made it to our bleacher seats at the stadium’s top-level. What struck me was the atmosphere during half-time, with so many people from all walks of life and all nationalities present. I guess this was when I realized: soccer brings people together and that this foreshadowed what the World Cup in the summer would be like, when I would see the real competition in person. We made it to our seats and during the second-half, France was in cruise control. They maintained total control of the game, with Doué scoring a third goal (France 3 - Columbia 0). I was extremely impressed by how clean they played. On the Columbia side, there were lots of problems chaining together plays that lead to offensive attacks. They did better than the first half in terms of defense and I have to give them credit on this point: they played very hard. Unfortunately though, Columbia was just not good enough on this day despite the hard work they put in. One super exciting thing that happened towards the late second half, Kylian Mbappe of Real Madrid was subbed into the game! This is someone who’s a global superstar and one of the highest paid athletes in the world! I was super excited to see Kylian Mbappe in the flesh and in real life, but he ended up not doing much for the rest of the game lol. Jaminton Campaz of Columbia and the Argentinian Primera División scored a late goal to make the final score (France 3 - Columbia 1). Knowing that France basically had the game in the bag, my friend and I actually left early to beat the traffic. We walked back to his car and motored out of Northwest Stadium and Landover, filled with a great memory!
Global superstar Kylian Mbappe of France enteres the game.
The World Cup has been super exciting this summer and I’ve been watching many matches, including going to an actual game myself. I will write more about it after the tournament ends. Until next time…