Maybe the best place to start with France is to take a look at what they won’t be, rather than what they are.
More than any World Cup that has gone before, the imperative for planets to align for a specific period of time is unavoidable in Qatar. France named their initial squad on November 9th and promptly lost two players before they even boarded the plane on the 14th, with Presnel Kimpembe and Christopher Nkunu both having to drop out through injury.
Here, then, is a briefly-sketched list of players Didier Deschamps won’t be calling on over the coming weeks. AC Milan’s goalkeeper in Mike Maignan. PSG’s best defender in Kimpembe. The Bundesliga’s top scorer in Nkunu. The prince of all defensive midfielders in N’Golo Kante. The showpony’s showpony in Paul Pogba. And that’s just the injury list.
Didier Deschamps hasn’t brought Ferland Mendy, Wesley Fofana, Lucas Digne, Moussa Diaby or Anthony Martial either.
Argentina World Cup win not enough to knock Brazil off top of Fifa rankings
Argentina forced to swap bus for helicopters as fans swarm streets during parade
Qatar revels in tournament triumph — a lens on how the world works
World Cup 2022 knock-out stages: Your complete guide to the fixtures and results
The purpose of the exercise isn’t to cry them a river, of course. It’s precisely the opposite. There isn’t another manager in the tournament who could absorb that scale of losses without considering faking a heart-attack and spending the next month on his couch. For Deschamps, it will be like a drummer going to his back pocket for another drumstick without losing a beat.
Kimpembe’s place will most likely go to either William Saliba, arguably the best young centre-back in the Premier League this season, or Liverpool’s Ibrahima Konaté.
The French facility for imploding at big tournaments is never a millon miles from the surface
Kante’s replacement is Aurelien Tchouameni, Real Madrid’s €100m signing during the summer. Pogba’s spot will probably go to Adrien Rabiot of Juventus but Deschamps has other options in the likes of Eduardo Camavinga and Youssouf Fofana as well. The decadence of it all.
Deschamps has been admirably succinct and to the point about it all. The French facility for imploding at big tournaments is never a million miles from the surface but, throughout his wildly successful tenure, the former midfielder has always used simplicity as the ultimate fire blanket.
Yes, he told The Athletic a couple of weeks back, Kante and Pogba are losses. But ultimately, if France are going to defend their title, the front players have to do the damage.
They have Karim Benzema, they have Kylian Mbappé and they have Antoine Griezmann. If it all gets a bit sticky at any stage, they will have Oliver Giroud and Ousmane Dembelé and Kingsley Coman to throw into the mix. They’re either going to get it done or they’re not. No big mystery.
“The heart of the game in midfield is important,” Deschamps said. “But above all it is attackers who make the difference, who win the matches. But that is not enough in a World Cup. You cannot be negligent about defensive solidity. It depends on the collective. Be solid. Defend very well.”
If history is any guide, Deschamps will be up against it. He is already one of only three men in history to win the World Cup as a player and a coach – Mario Zagallo and Franz Beckenbauer are the only others on the list.
If France are dancing on the podium on December 18th, Deschamps will join Vittorio Pozzo as the tournament’s only back-to-back winning coaches. That’s an 88-year gap sitting waiting to be filled. Nothing about it is straightforward.
In the immediate term, Deschamps has another quirk of history to overcome. European teams defending the World Cup have a woeful modern record in the tournament. Going back to France in 1998, European teams have won five of the last six World Cups. Of the four that preceded this French side, none got through the opening round.
You’re talking a list of some of the greatest World Cup mishaps of all time here. Papa Bouba Diop leading Senegal to victory over France in the 2002 opener. Winless Italy finishing bottom of a group that featured New Zealand, Slovakia and Paraguay in 2010. Spain getting rinsed 5-1 by the Netherlands in 2014 and finding themselves eliminated inside five days. Germany wilting before Mexico and South Korea last time out.
So Job One for France is to survive the opening week. They have Australia on Tuesday, Denmark next Saturday and Tunisia the following Wednesday. According to the geek heroes at the FiveThirtyEight, Group D is statistically the fifth hardest of the eight. Australia are the lowest in the Fifa rankings at 38 and are maybe the only team in the tournament who have a busier medical room than France.
If bodies won’t necessarily be a problem, Deschamps may well worry more about states of mind. As last summer’s Euros showed, the world champions have developed a curious habit of drifting through games and handing goals to lesser opposition.
Sometimes they’ve been able to chase them down, as against Hungary and Portugal in the group stage games in Budapest. But it eventually cost them in the round of 16 game against Switzerland.
There might be no flashier warning sign for France’s hopes in Qatar than that game in Bucharest 17 months ago. They went a goal down for the third time in four games when Haris Seferovic scored on the quarter hour. Then they wandered through the game, barely raising a gallop, until Benzema plundered two goals in two minutes and Pogba bent in a spectacular third. And yet they conspired to throw away a 3-1 lead in the closing nine minutes before losing on penalties.
All in all, it was the exit of a team that looked smug and self-satisfied. A team that had won their World Cup and gave the impression of not being especially bothered whether they followed it up with a European Championships. A team that, above all, didn’t share their manager’s insistent zeal for winning.
In France, Deschamps is seen as a little dull, dutiful, a bit of a company man. His interviews are perfectly polite and wholly uninformative. His players may be some of the biggest stars in the game but he is almost aggressively unshowy. He is about winning, not a penny more. And for the most part, he is duly respected.
But there is also a sense in France that his time has passed. He hasn’t said he’s finishing up after the World Cup but the expectation is that his decade-long stint in the job is up when the tournament ends. Zinedine Zidane is assumed to be drumming his fingers on the desk, the hero of heroes ready to assume the national reins.
As ever with France, they fully expect it to be feast or famine. In their last six World Cups, five have ended either in the group stage or the final. When they’re good, they’re very, very good. When they’re not, it’s comedy.
With France, the doubt is the delicious bit. Though Benzema is the Ballon D’Or holder, injuries have meant he’s played three matches in three months in La Liga. Mbappé is potentially the most exciting player in the tournament but his head has been very obviously astray with PSG this season and there’s been no pre-World Cup break for him to wash it off.
Raphael Varane could be the best defender in the tournament or he might not play a minute. Hugo Lloris is likely to pass Lilian Thuram’s caps record but Spurs have conceded the most goals of the top eight teams in the Premier League. And on and on.
Everywhere you look, there is potential for triumph and for disaster. With France at a World Cup, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
