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A dvantage France. On a beautiful summer day in Nizhny Novgorod, jewel of the Upper Volga, Russia turned blue slightly but significantly.
There are different ways to advertise yourself as the most likely winners of a World Cup. At nine days of the arrival of the lights of the house, the ideal result for France Didier Deschamps would have been a loosening of the throttle, a moment for these delicate offensive talents who hurry and illuminate the last stages.
Of course, a fundamental problem here. For this situation to happen, Didier Deschamps' France would have to be France for someone else.
On the contrary, these Blues were compact, powerful, cautious in possession and disciplined in defense. It worked too. That's how champions sometimes play. And that was enough to win a 2-0 win in the quarterfinals against tough opponents, helped by a goal and a screamer Fernando Muslera, who split the shot in the second half of Antoine Griezmann with a strange wrist shot. someone desperately trying to dry a new layer of nail polish.
At the final whistle, there was a slight emotional disjunction. Uruguay was clueless, falling on turf online. The white players just stopped running and remained motionless, a team that had won without ever having to look into these deep emotional registers.
Deschamps is not a popular manager among reporters, whom he seems to despise is quietly returned. Here he is finally out to join his players a bit clumsily, offering hugs to glamorous boys of his own brand of devilish attack, Hugo Lloris, Raphael Varane and Steven Nzonzi
. It is easy also to feel sympathy for Deschamps. The manager has in his hands a gold ticket, a talent harvest beyond anything else for this tournament. For Deschamps, a unique and vaguely terrifying double is at hand. France has already failed to win the euro at home. Can they go further and not win the World Cup?
This is the dilemma, the peril of a manager endowed with such resources and a scenario where, all other things being equal, France should really win. ] Two strong opponents but far from being irresistible will oppose this burden, the bomb of talents at its disposal. In the midst of which the sentiment remains, for all of Kylian Mbappé's fizzish moments against Argentina, that this team has never been allowed to hunt for victory rather than push it, to reach the corners. the most remote of their exalting depths
Do they need to? France looked threatening, although in a match where Uruguay hardly played a role. The absence of Edinson Cavani was a huge blow, not just for his job but for his willingness to run like a man pursued by a swarm of wasps. His replacement Cristhian Stuani was mediocre in this venture. In an hour on the field, Stuani completed three passes. He gave the ball with a bad touch five times. So it was at least something.
There was a first flicker of Mbappé after six minutes, a close up thrust halfway inside two blue shirts, with this movement of slalom feet, and the strange feeling of watch something move in a static frame, a frieze where all the other silhouettes stand and watch.
France 's first goal came from another summer play, a world cup where the world finally learned the full value of the mixer.
Perhaps this is really the case for England: not to make as much progress as wearing the same pair of corduroy pants with studded bottoms so long that everyone eventually catches up.
Griezmann's delivery was accurate. Varane's race was fast and perfectly synchronized, the head cut off in the farthest corner. There was no innovation, just a basic routine very well executed. The role of VAR is worth taking into account. Nobody caught or blocked or thwarted Varane. The defenders reacted to the first wave of grappling-penalties in retreating.
It may be useful to remind the lost art to forget each other and just try to put the head on the ball.
Paul Pogba played well, passing well and holding his ground in the center. Ousmane Dembélé was the most basic of all, who does not seem to have the opportunity to illuminate this World Cup. Turns forward have been restricted, spaces held, backs disciplined
France is good enough to win the World Cup by playing like that. They are also good enough to play with a lot more verve, to stimulate the imagination of the players as well as the spectators. That they need it or that they really could have been so restricted up to here may be the key to Didier's nine-day destiny.
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