In France, they have noted how Rabiot, who had a brief spell in Manchester City’s youth system, seemed to be exchanging angry words with Pogba during the match, among a number of disagreements between players on the same side. Benjamin Pavard was also said to have an issue with Pogba’s positioning and could be seen berating his team-mate. Pogba, who had played exquisitely for the most part, took exception and bit back.
That can happen, of course, and ordinarily it would be difficult to know how much to read into it. England’s defeat of Germany, featuring some heated words between Harry Maguire and Jordan Pickford, was just one example. It is a team sport, and some of the most successful teams feature players who regularly lose their tempers with each other.
But there was also that revealing scene just before the penalty shootout when Switzerland’s players and staff gathered in a huddle, taking their words of motivation from a fist-pumping Granit Xhaka, while the reigning world champions were drifting around in groups of twos and threes. Pogba had his arm draped around Deschamps’ shoulder but, overall, there was not the closeness of their opponents.
“The balance, in football, is very difficult,” the president of one leading French club tells The Athletic. “People cannot understand that this is not only 11 players and one coach. There are thousands of things that have to be under control. It is very fragile and there are two big diseases in a dressing room: ego and jealousy.”
The decision to recall Karim Benzema for this tournament was always going to be key and, on the face of it, his two goals against Portugal and Switzerland would suggest that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Yet it was never going to be straightforward bearing in mind Benzema had been excluded since November 2015 because of the court case that is being brought against him for allegedly blackmailing his former France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape. The nature of that charge meant there were always going to be issues, even with Valbuena no longer on the scene.
More than that, there was the fact Benzema had a strained relationship with Olivier Giroud, including his now-infamous observation that their rivalry was like comparing a Formula 1 car with a go-kart.
A week before the tournament began, Giroud tried to make light of it, joking that he would challenge Benzema to a karting race if they won the tournament. The two players were strategically placed on the same table during team meals. For Deschamps, team solidarity has been a near-obsession since replacing Laurent Blanc in 2012, two years after Nicolas Anelka was sent home from the World Cup and Raymond Domenech had to withstand a mutiny from his own players. It matters to Deschamps greatly, and it will pain him if that has been lost.
Various observers have told The Athletic they believe Benzema’s return to the squad had a number of consequences. How, they ask, must Giroud have felt, as the second-highest scorer in France’s history, to be displaced almost overnight by a player who had openly derided him?
Patrick Vieira, the former France captain, was particularly scathing — “there wasn’t any kind of togetherness, there wasn’t any kind of spirit” — in the wake of the Switzerland defeat.
The issue with Mbappe, who chose a bad month to lose his form, seems less troubling when the player is only 22 and has shown many times that he warrants his superstar status.
Mbappe seemed to wilt under the pressure but the reaction in France has not been too harsh and it was not true, however it might have looked on television, that none of his team-mates sympathised with him after his penalty was saved.
What the television pictures did not show was Pogba going over to comfort his team-mate. Lucas Digne, who missed the game through injury, offered his own support. Marcus Thuram and Moussa Sissoko were among the other players who went to console a striker who had finished the tournament with no goals from four games.
“He (Mbappe) is a fantastic boy,” says one of the people who has worked with him. “His parents are very close to him. The father is fantastic; a good person and a good kid. Kylian has a lot of pressure for someone his age. He feels he is carrying a country at times. In 2018, he had innocence, now it is expectation. Those guys at the very top have such pressure. Ronaldo and Messi had tournaments like this.”
Mbappe will now go on holiday and then return to Paris, where coach Mauricio Pochettino wishes to shelter and protect him from outside criticism. One source close to the club pointed to David Beckham’s excellent treble-winning season for Manchester United in 1999 after his red card at the 1998 World Cup, which made him a national scapegoat.
The microscope, however, will only intensify on Mbappe, who has a year to run on his contract and Real Madrid will make an attempt to sign him. PSG, however, are continuing talks over a renegotiation and remain confident of securing a deal viewed by the club’s Qatari owners as a priority as they seek to maintain prestige ahead of the 2022 World Cup.
Mbappe will return to a strengthened PSG side, with new signing Georginio Wijnaldum to be joined this week by Achraf Hakimi from Inter Milan in a deal worth more than £50 million, while talks continue over a move for AC Milan goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Athletic can also confirm PSG have spoken in the last 10 days to representatives of Sergio Ramos, who wants a two-year contract and also has interest from the Premier League.
In France, the debate has centred more on the squad as a whole and, specifically, whether some of their least attractive traits have resurfaced.
One long-time follower of the national team describes it as a “vicious group”. Deschamps had previously dropped Samir Nasri and Hatem Ben Arfa after taking the view they were not suited to play “squad football”. Now questions are being asked about whether there might have to be some more tough decisions.
“It is only a few weeks until the World Cup qualification starts and we need to unite,” says Didier Six, the former France international. “We must remember to say we do not win or lose but that we win or we learn. We need to leave this behind us now and come together. We need to close this stuff about families and friends because what happens in the France team now is we are looking for good friends to support each other. You need good friends with you. The people outside the football are not important. The trainer and the players are the important people. We must never forget this.”
As for Deschamps, this is the first time his position has looked vulnerable in any way. Managers, like players, can lose form but let’s not forget either that his record of achievement makes him a hard man to sack.
“Football is magic, and this magic can be positive or negative,” Six, who manages the Guinea national team, adds. “For France, the magic is now negative. But we cannot speak too much against Deschamps because this is a man who won the World Cup as a player and a coach for France. The people should be with him. I am also a coach and I cannot accept that we put down Deschamps as a coach.”
Deschamps still faces a meeting with Noel Le Graet, president of the French football federation, next week to offer his assessment about what went wrong and what needs to be done to put it right. France’s medical staff are also under scrutiny because of the number of players who struggled with injuries during the tournament. Lenglet, The Athletic has discovered, played against Switzerland despite nursing an injury. Rabiot also had to play through the pain barrier and, having lost Digne and Lucas Hernandez in a damaging eight-minute spell against Portugal, the absence of a left-back was one of the reasons why Deschamps experimented with a wing-back system.
Rabiot was operating on the left and, according to reliable accounts, Pogba had spoken to Deschamps in the build-up to the game to let the manager know that this formation would be welcomed by the players. It did not work. Deschamps gave up on the idea at half-time and later had to endure the awkwardness of trying to replace one of his substitutes, Kingsley Coman, only for the player to refuse to go off.
Coman, who had damaged his thigh, did eventually acknowledge he could not continue, but only after two occasions when Thuram had taken off his bib to replace him.
High in the stands, Veronique Rabiot was wearing a France shirt bearing her son’s name and No 14. Her sunglasses were on top of her head, her handbag across her shoulder. Mbappe’s family were sitting directly in front of her. She was on her feet and you didn’t need to be a lip-reader to realise that she was getting a few things off her chest. And an old quote comes to mind from Marcel Desailly after France had returned from the 2002 World Cup in a similar state of disrepair.
“There are a few little things we have to change,” the former France captain said. “It’s clear the machine has jammed.”
That can happen, of course, and ordinarily it would be difficult to know how much to read into it. England’s defeat of Germany, featuring some heated words between Harry Maguire and Jordan Pickford, was just one example. It is a team sport, and some of the most successful teams feature players who regularly lose their tempers with each other.
But there was also that revealing scene just before the penalty shootout when Switzerland’s players and staff gathered in a huddle, taking their words of motivation from a fist-pumping Granit Xhaka, while the reigning world champions were drifting around in groups of twos and threes. Pogba had his arm draped around Deschamps’ shoulder but, overall, there was not the closeness of their opponents.
“The balance, in football, is very difficult,” the president of one leading French club tells The Athletic. “People cannot understand that this is not only 11 players and one coach. There are thousands of things that have to be under control. It is very fragile and there are two big diseases in a dressing room: ego and jealousy.”
The decision to recall Karim Benzema for this tournament was always going to be key and, on the face of it, his two goals against Portugal and Switzerland would suggest that it was absolutely the right thing to do.
Yet it was never going to be straightforward bearing in mind Benzema had been excluded since November 2015 because of the court case that is being brought against him for allegedly blackmailing his former France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape. The nature of that charge meant there were always going to be issues, even with Valbuena no longer on the scene.
More than that, there was the fact Benzema had a strained relationship with Olivier Giroud, including his now-infamous observation that their rivalry was like comparing a Formula 1 car with a go-kart.
A week before the tournament began, Giroud tried to make light of it, joking that he would challenge Benzema to a karting race if they won the tournament. The two players were strategically placed on the same table during team meals. For Deschamps, team solidarity has been a near-obsession since replacing Laurent Blanc in 2012, two years after Nicolas Anelka was sent home from the World Cup and Raymond Domenech had to withstand a mutiny from his own players. It matters to Deschamps greatly, and it will pain him if that has been lost.
Various observers have told The Athletic they believe Benzema’s return to the squad had a number of consequences. How, they ask, must Giroud have felt, as the second-highest scorer in France’s history, to be displaced almost overnight by a player who had openly derided him?
Patrick Vieira, the former France captain, was particularly scathing — “there wasn’t any kind of togetherness, there wasn’t any kind of spirit” — in the wake of the Switzerland defeat.
The issue with Mbappe, who chose a bad month to lose his form, seems less troubling when the player is only 22 and has shown many times that he warrants his superstar status.
Mbappe seemed to wilt under the pressure but the reaction in France has not been too harsh and it was not true, however it might have looked on television, that none of his team-mates sympathised with him after his penalty was saved.
What the television pictures did not show was Pogba going over to comfort his team-mate. Lucas Digne, who missed the game through injury, offered his own support. Marcus Thuram and Moussa Sissoko were among the other players who went to console a striker who had finished the tournament with no goals from four games.
“He (Mbappe) is a fantastic boy,” says one of the people who has worked with him. “His parents are very close to him. The father is fantastic; a good person and a good kid. Kylian has a lot of pressure for someone his age. He feels he is carrying a country at times. In 2018, he had innocence, now it is expectation. Those guys at the very top have such pressure. Ronaldo and Messi had tournaments like this.”
Mbappe will now go on holiday and then return to Paris, where coach Mauricio Pochettino wishes to shelter and protect him from outside criticism. One source close to the club pointed to David Beckham’s excellent treble-winning season for Manchester United in 1999 after his red card at the 1998 World Cup, which made him a national scapegoat.
The microscope, however, will only intensify on Mbappe, who has a year to run on his contract and Real Madrid will make an attempt to sign him. PSG, however, are continuing talks over a renegotiation and remain confident of securing a deal viewed by the club’s Qatari owners as a priority as they seek to maintain prestige ahead of the 2022 World Cup.
Mbappe will return to a strengthened PSG side, with new signing Georginio Wijnaldum to be joined this week by Achraf Hakimi from Inter Milan in a deal worth more than £50 million, while talks continue over a move for AC Milan goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Athletic can also confirm PSG have spoken in the last 10 days to representatives of Sergio Ramos, who wants a two-year contract and also has interest from the Premier League.
In France, the debate has centred more on the squad as a whole and, specifically, whether some of their least attractive traits have resurfaced.
One long-time follower of the national team describes it as a “vicious group”. Deschamps had previously dropped Samir Nasri and Hatem Ben Arfa after taking the view they were not suited to play “squad football”. Now questions are being asked about whether there might have to be some more tough decisions.
“It is only a few weeks until the World Cup qualification starts and we need to unite,” says Didier Six, the former France international. “We must remember to say we do not win or lose but that we win or we learn. We need to leave this behind us now and come together. We need to close this stuff about families and friends because what happens in the France team now is we are looking for good friends to support each other. You need good friends with you. The people outside the football are not important. The trainer and the players are the important people. We must never forget this.”
As for Deschamps, this is the first time his position has looked vulnerable in any way. Managers, like players, can lose form but let’s not forget either that his record of achievement makes him a hard man to sack.
“Football is magic, and this magic can be positive or negative,” Six, who manages the Guinea national team, adds. “For France, the magic is now negative. But we cannot speak too much against Deschamps because this is a man who won the World Cup as a player and a coach for France. The people should be with him. I am also a coach and I cannot accept that we put down Deschamps as a coach.”
Deschamps still faces a meeting with Noel Le Graet, president of the French football federation, next week to offer his assessment about what went wrong and what needs to be done to put it right. France’s medical staff are also under scrutiny because of the number of players who struggled with injuries during the tournament. Lenglet, The Athletic has discovered, played against Switzerland despite nursing an injury. Rabiot also had to play through the pain barrier and, having lost Digne and Lucas Hernandez in a damaging eight-minute spell against Portugal, the absence of a left-back was one of the reasons why Deschamps experimented with a wing-back system.
Rabiot was operating on the left and, according to reliable accounts, Pogba had spoken to Deschamps in the build-up to the game to let the manager know that this formation would be welcomed by the players. It did not work. Deschamps gave up on the idea at half-time and later had to endure the awkwardness of trying to replace one of his substitutes, Kingsley Coman, only for the player to refuse to go off.
Coman, who had damaged his thigh, did eventually acknowledge he could not continue, but only after two occasions when Thuram had taken off his bib to replace him.
High in the stands, Veronique Rabiot was wearing a France shirt bearing her son’s name and No 14. Her sunglasses were on top of her head, her handbag across her shoulder. Mbappe’s family were sitting directly in front of her. She was on her feet and you didn’t need to be a lip-reader to realise that she was getting a few things off her chest. And an old quote comes to mind from Marcel Desailly after France had returned from the 2002 World Cup in a similar state of disrepair.
“There are a few little things we have to change,” the former France captain said. “It’s clear the machine has jammed.”
I’m just glad games are back today
Early goal