The France team resumes its share of failure, a year after a tasteless Euro. The fiasco stretches beyond the worst thoughts, with zero wins in four games and three small goals scored. These results condemn immediately, before starting her confidence for later: she will not participate in the final four of the League of Nations, the trophy she had snatched to scare again last fall. She will have broadcast at the end of spring that she remains ill, crippled with problems, that the heavy legs of the end of the season cannot explain everything.
Finally, the Blues offered the worst of themselves, with a lifeless, inanimate first half, lost in limbo from our worst start for the Blues in four years. An infernal porridge, to prefer sunny terraces to international football on Monday evening just before the summer and the announced heat wave. The weather is warming up, not the France team, an iceberg of happiness, cold as boredom.
A glaring lack of enthusiasm
On a pace of walkers prevented by stones in the shoe, they let the Croats come and tickle them for a penalty conceded immediately (5th), the second in eight days against the vice-world champion. This time Jonathan Clauss, whom we will not see again, a priori, in the France team, has nothing to do with it. The referee, who did not have the best game of his life, “forgetting” a penalty in the other direction (68th) for a foul on Lucas Digne past his defender, much more.
The wounded pride, after the Croatian goal, produced no revolt, the men of Didier Deschamps bogged down in mediocrity. We will have to wait for the break, the change of a full-back and a midfielder in the same 4-3-3 system – the third in four games – to find a little momentum, a semblance of dynamism. But the creativity, the game on the sides, the repetitions will have built a country without an inhabitant, as if confined. The game remained in the blue house, but then well inside. We would have liked him to take more air, even if Kylian Mbappé will point the end of his threat outside then in the box, stumbling over Ivusic.
Griezmann, the breakdown
Four games, three goals scored, five conceded and at least one on each outing, the tricolor record looks like a disaster, with the attacking sector first completely extinguished. A flash from Benzema (Denmark), another from Mbappé (Austria), a nice goal from Rabiot (in Croatia) and that’s it. Antoine Griezmann will have been absent to himself, Wissam Ben Yedder without particular interest and the two wingers, Moussa Diaby and Kingsley Coman, very handicapped in the last gesture, as if being decisive was too big for them.
It is not here, or anywhere else, that we will question the qualities of the usual trio in front – Griezmann-Mbappé-Benzema -, made up of at least two world champions, but that is not enough to aim for the heights. . We need an alternative, a plan B that can only embody Olivier Giroud, the only scorer at the level and still available. The competition of this month of June has no comparable consistency. A few months after a botched Euro, the Blues had advanced with the victory of the League of Nations. They just backed off again.
The game sheet
Half time: 1-0.
Referee: O. Grinfeld (Isr).
But : Modric (5e s.p.)
Warnings. France : Guendouzi (18e), Pavard (62e), Rabiot (67e) ; Croatie : Brozovic (50e).
France : Maignan – Kounde (Pavard, 46th), Konate, Kimpembe (cap.), Digne – Guendouzi (Griezmann, 80th), Rabiot, Kamara (Tchouaméni, 46th), Nkunku (Coman, 72nd), Mbappe, Benzema. Entr. : Deschamps.
Croatia: Ivusic – Stanisic, Erlic, Sutalo, Juranovic – Brozovic, Kovacic (Susic, 90e + 1) – Modric (cap.), Pasalic (Majer, 65e), Budimir (Kramaric, 72e), Brekalo (Vlasic, 72e). Entr. : Dalic.