France Women edged Hungary 2:1 on 21 August in a friendly match played in Budapest. The result breaks a run of seven straight wins for the hosts across their last five games — eight goals against Norway, four in another fixture, three over Italy, and four against China. To be fair, the visitors had not won their last outing, losing 2:3 to Germany the day before.
And here's the thing about this sort of game — you watch where the camera doesn't. Hungary came at them hard, as they do when they have momentum, but France held their shape. The turning point came when the hosts pushed too many players forward and France got dragged out of position just once. That price has gone.
By then the match had settled into something more tactical than the scoresheet suggests. Hungary's attack — eight goals in their opening fixture — met a side that had already been tested. France's defence, despite that defeat to Germany, showed composure. The visitors worked a short corner in the second half and carved them open. The clean-sheet run came to an end, but the three points stayed.
What the result means is straightforward. Hungary move onto a different footing after a match that exposed the gap between their recent form and the reality of playing France. France, meanwhile, picked one up last week and carried that into Budapest. The scoreline says 1:2, but the story is in how both sides responded when the game tightened.