This is the problem when you take a liking to victory, the defeat then becomes unpleasant in the mouth. Since the France team won its first world star in 1998, returns to earth have almost always been experienced as industrial accidents with the culprits to be designated and a moral fault to be paid. Win or fail in the wide widths of the World Cup, this would be the only possible horizon for Hugo Lloris’ teammates a few days before starting their tournament against Australia, on November 22 at the Al-Janoub stadium, in Qatar.
At 35, the goalkeeper (and captain) has known the worst and the best as a globalist. He was a young and passive mutineer in a bus stopped in Knysna (South Africa) during the most famous and grotesque strike in French sport, in the middle of the 2010 World Cup. Eight years after this short stay in South Africa (and an entry road exit with two defeats in three games), Lloris brandishes the Jules-Rimet trophy in the Moscow rain. Between the two, the Nice experienced a so-called “normal” World Cup with this elimination in the quarter-finals lost without shame or eternal regrets against Germany (1-0), in 2014. Karim Benzema too. In Rio, the cursed future of Doha (injured and forfeited for the current edition) plays what remains his last match in a World Cup.
The Brazilian episode therefore looks like an anomaly. Since 1998, the French team has been traveling between the Austerlitz station (the 1998 and 2018 titles, the 2006 final) and the Waterloo terminus. Eight years before Knysna, the Blues are preparing for the World Cup in South Korea with a second star already sewn above the rooster on their jersey. Like a whole country, the official equipment supplier with the three stripes sees this team as too beautiful and untouchable. The Clairefontaine training center (Yvelines) is open to all merchants of the temple, and by dint of going from one sponsor’s tent to another, defender Willy Sagnol loose “having lived a VIP week”.
“We can say anything in football”
The sequel is known. Elimination in the first round of the 2002 World Cup healed as badly as the famous left thigh of Zinédine Zidane. We fantasize about a life of debauched rockstars at the Sheraton Hotel in Seoul, when a media court condemns this team for arrogance, when it was especially at the end of its course and badly governed by its coach, Roger Lemerre. “We are not the Dream Team. Everyone has forgotten that we are only footballers. We make matches and we can lose them., had however warned Lilian Thuram after the inaugural defeat against Senegal (1-0). When we discuss the South Korean episode with him, Didier Deschamps comes out of it with a pirouette: “I was on vacation at the time. » Not false.
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