Almost Did

Stepping down after 14 years, Didier Deschamps will be ruing yet another missed opportunity

By JAMES EASTHAM

“ I’m disappointed in myself,” said France left-back Lucas Digne, reflecting on his country’s World Cup semi-final defeat to Spain a couple of days after the event. Digne’s whack against Lamine Yamal’s thigh with his boot earned Spain the penalty from which they took a 22nd-minute lead. Having seized control, Spain never relinquished it. France had been marginally the better team up until that point.

Digne’s foul marked the beginning of the end of France’s participation in a tournament that, for a time, they looked like they might win. Had they done so, they would have gone down as one of international football’s great sides. Fielding a front four that ranks among France’s finest – Ousmane Dembélé on the right wing, Michael Olise in the No 10 role, one of Désiré Doué and Bradley Barcola on the left wing, and Kylian Mbappé in the centre-forward position – this version of France combined speed on the break with surgical precision when they arrived in the opposition half.

Even as they blasted their way through the group phase, however, and while we marvelled at the five goals they scored against Sweden and Morocco in the knockouts, it was impossible to not think back to the Netherlands in 1974, or Brazil in 1982. World Cups of the past have taught us that teams playing as France did rarely get their hands on the trophy. So it proved.

“I feel like I’ve been tricked,” said journalist Dave Appadoo, speaking on sports newspaper L’Équipe ’s TV channel after France went out. “Not in this game, but across the World Cup. We came this far by playing some great football, but I was asking myself: ‘Have we really been tested?’ For me, losing like that – with a total non-performance, being taught a lesson in footballing intelligence, organisation, everything – invalidates what went before. It’s like I had the wool pulled over my eyes.”

So, after a bright start, France were unable to emulate their 1998 and 2018 winning teams

Former players now employed to dole out strident views on the airwaves adopted a similar tone. Christophe Dugarry, a member of the 1998 World Cup-winning squad – whose antipathy towards his former team-mate, France’s outgoing manager Didier Deschamps, is well documented – was notably severe. “It’s not a defeat; it’s a humiliation. It was a terrible performance in every possible way. You can lose to Spain, no problem – but not like that.”

Deschamps had spent much of his 14 years in charge dealing with the accusation that his player and tactical selections were too conservative. This time, if anything, he paid the price for being too bold. Rather than switching from the adventurous, open 4-2-3-1 that France had used to blow away lesser opposition to a more robust 4-3-3 that many had predicted pre-tournament he would adopt against the very best sides, he stuck with the former.

With room and more men in midfield, Spain deprived France of the ball, and won with ease. In the end it was fitting that a team relying on individual sparkle saw two of its stars collect awards: Mbappé won the Golden Boot, his ten goals making him the first player to get into double figures since Gerd Müller in 1974, while Olise provided the most assists (seven), which now appears to mean something. And yet here, too, all was not quite as dazzling as it seemed: Mbappé secured top spot in the scorers’ charts only after bagging two goals in the hugely entertaining but largely meaningless 6-4 third-place play-off defeat by England; and, for all the initial delights of Olise’s dancing feet, none of his assists occurred in France’s last 16, quarter-final or semi-final fixtures.

So, after a bright start, France were unable to emulate their 1998 and 2018 winning teams. They will be remembered with less romantic anguish than the 1982 side, 3-1 up against West Germany in the semi-final, only to lose on penalties while a dazed Patrick Battiston was somewhere else, nursing the severe head injuries German goalkeeper Harald Schumacher had inflicted upon him.

The challenge for incoming manager Zinedine Zidane will be to win more. In seven major tournaments under Deschamps, France reached the semi-finals five times, yet lifted a trophy just once, at the World Cup in Russia eight years ago. The lasting lesson of their semi-final defeat to Spain – who beat them at the same stage of the European Championship two years ago – is that France need a stronger team identity to avoid more near misses in future.