The coach of the Blues must announce the list of retained for the World Cup in Qatar, Wednesday evening, at the JT of TF1. It remains to be seen whether he will decide to bring the memory of 2018 to life or whether he will choose plasticity.
This Wednesday evening, on TF1 news, Didier Deschamps will announce the list of retained for the world (November 20 to December 18) and the coach of the Blues will take the opportunity to go around the owner, at discretion: the lie, the denial, the half-truths and, who knows, the beginning of a discard pile – understand me, I have injuries – explaining in advance the tricolor fiasco to come if it were to occur. Or he will do the opposite.
It’s up to him, it’s his time. For ten years that the Basque has presided over the sporting destinies of the selection, the announcement of the list of starters has a rather relative stake: holders that we have known for months, substitutes chosen for their propensity to keep their mouths shut long as it will last (and too bad if they disconnect in training during the upcoming competition, Deschamps is understanding on that) and one or two leading roles in the ditch – Samir Nasri in 2014 on the altar of toxicity or Adrien Rabiot, deemed too neutral, before the Russian World Cup in 2018.
There, it is something else. Six of the eleven starters who attacked Euro 2021 fifteen months ago in Munich are out (N’Golo Kanté and Paul Pogba) or injured (Raphaël Varane, Lucas Hernandez, Presnel Kimpembe, Karim Benzema) to varying degrees, the most of their replacements at the time have disappeared into the siphon (Kurt Zouma, Corentin Tolisso, Thomas Lemar, Wissam Ben Yedder…) and the coach is at a crossroads. If athletic logic prevails, Deschamps will cut wide and move on: Jonathan Clauss, Youssouf Fofana, Ferland Mendy, Christopher Nkunku or even Pierre Kalulu or Ibrahima Konaté. But he can also decide to bring the memory to life.
rekindle the flame
Blow as much as possible on the flame at the extreme limit of the extinction of the 2018 title to revive it a little: the Qatari world is seven games. He would then have to give up. In mid-September, before an international window as failed (a victory against weak Austria, a thrashing in Denmark) as the previous one, he had set the scene: “For a final tournament, I never took a player if he was not fully recovered.” Varane knows something about it, who had long blamed the coach for having dismissed him before Euro 2016 when he only needed, in his opinion, a few days to build an acceptable body. And there? What about the same Varane, who came out in tears from the lawn of Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea stadium, on October 23, after yet another alert to the right thigh and who never stops communicating about an injury “less serious than feared” without setting foot on the ground?
And Benzema, fresh from Ballon d’Or, forfeited four times in Real Madrid’s last five games and who, according to the latest news, is skipping training? And Kimpembé, tortured against Espérance Sportive Troyes Aube Champagne ten days ago for his return after six weeks in the fridge (hamstrings of the left thigh) and who has since disappeared? On closer inspection, the risk-taking of cutting to the quick is relative. These remain on a mediocre Euro 2021, completed in the round of 16 against the Swiss Nati (3-3, 4-5 on penalties) and where it had conceded wagons of goals (6 in 4 games), saying the physical and mental collapse of those who play behind.
In the immediate entourage of the Blues, they are for example some to have welcomed half voice the package of Paul Pogba, defensive half suspect even at his best (zero ball recovered in two hours against the Swiss, 13 lost) and leader suspected of diligent marabouts against teammates in blue – we use the plural intentionally -, without even talk about the court case and the family war he’s embroiled in.
Stop or again?
The Pogba case is an allegory, by definition, young people travel light in comparison. At least until the monstrous pressure that comes with the tricolor jersey falls on them. Benjamin Pavard and Lucas Hernandez had swallowed it as a joke in 2018, but not all players are of this caliber. So ? Stop or again? Judged a few months ago to be incompatible with Benzema, that is to say subscribed to the bench since the Madrid player is not discussed at the forefront of the tricolor attack as long as he is valid, Olivier Giroud, who is on fire with AC Milan (three goals and an assist in two games last week), is given the start for Qatar: for Deschamps, the time seems to be for a certain plasticity.
The coach will be able to find a media gain there, certainly not a detail if we remember the Benzema case: his banishment in 2015 then his recall in 2021 strictly followed the attacker’s popularity curve over time, which the interested party underlined by dedicating his recent Ballon d’Or to the “people”, way of saying that this one indirectly resettled him with the Blues.
Players like comforters, making the link with heroic times. A melancholy and meditative epic, the winners of 2018 or what remains of it returned transformed by their respective long journeys, as if made pensive by the experience. Easier to sell than the idea of a reconstruction and the modest objectives that go with it. But it’s always the pitch and the outcome that give things their final meaning.