France 2-0 Morocco: Didier Deschamps’ side might be too entertaining to win the World Cup – The Warm-Up

THURSDAY’S BIG STORIES

What’s The French For ‘Getting It Done’?

Two World Cup finals in two tournaments, under the same coach, anchored by the same captain and led by the same superstar… you’d expect a certain consistency in approach, too. But the 2018 edition of France was solid, obdurate, occasionally miserable. They had N’Golo Kanté and Blaise Matuidi out there making life hard for the opposition and, if we’re being honest, sometimes for the viewers at home as well.

This lot? This lot are not that. They’ll go into Sunday’s final against Argentina as favourites, but they’ll also go in with the world knowing that they can be got at.

This is a France team shaped by injuries, long-term and short, from Paul Pogba’s ongoing problems to the detonation of Lucas Hernández’s knee in the opening game. Broadly speaking, the changes that Didier Deschamps has been forced into since naming his final squad – Olivier Giroud starting over Karim Benzema, Theo Hernández replacing his brother at left-back – have made France a better attacking team, with T. Hernández on the overlap and Giroud a more traditional point man.

But aren’t they squidgy? Time and again Morocco unpicked them down the right – France’s left – and with a little more precision on the final ball they could have made Hugo Lloris’ evening very exciting indeed. At this point we remember that Bukayo Saka, who also started over on France’s left, had a productive evening of torturing defenders until he was taken off, and we start to wonder if we might have found a pattern. Where the short blanket exposes the soft underbelly. Who wants to guess where Lionel Messi will start? (Trick question. He’ll start wherever he wants.)

In 2018, and with a couple of exceptions, France essentially smothered their opposition before they could get going. Last night, as Morocco poked and prodded, as they nearly’d and almost’d, France put together their first clean sheet of the tournament with some frantic penalty-area defending. Even Raphaël Varane was at it, flinging himself in front of this and in the way of that, a Rolls-Royce parked sideways across the street and then set on fire. When you need a barricade, you need a barricade.

And here we have a confession to make. When we looked at France’s team for the first game, and saw Antoine Griezmann playing behind a front three, we thought: might be a bit open that. Can they really get away with Griezmann? We were right about it being open, of course, and well done us; but we were astoundingly wrong about Griezmann.

In our defence, nobody told us that he was going to play like this. Once again he was everywhere: making the first goal with a run in behind, directing play through the middle, winning tackles in front of his own penalty area. It is a noted phenomenon, in football scouting, that boys with blond hair tend to stand out from their counterparts. It might be time to start investigating if this is because bleaching your hair turns you into Bryan Robson.

We’ll get onto the biggest story of the final in a minute, but first we’ll return to the overall picture. France will be favourites, but by our reckoning that’s a thin, faint nod towards this weird and improvised team that are making life very, very stressful. Champions get into trouble and then find ways to win, so they say. France are doing their absolute best to prove it.

The Narrative, It’s Too Big

Whatever the result on Sunday, it’s pretty obvious that Griezmann should win player of the tournament. It’s equally clear that he won’t, because he has the blessed luck to be in a team with one of the greatest footballers on the planet, and the terrible misfortune to be lining up against one of the greatest footballers in the history of the planet. There isn’t enough peroxide in the world.

When Sunday comes around there will be a whole lot more going on than Mbappé vs. Messi, and yet the mind – and of course the pre-match build-up – will be drawn back there, again and again. The best against the best! The past against the future! One last glorious summit for the goatiest goat that ever goated, or perhaps the passing of the crown from the ageing king to the upstart prince. Goats are monarchists, you see, but they also believe in trial by combat.

A suggestion: the only reason Mbappé isn’t already regarded as the best player in the world is because everybody’s a bit concerned that it might still be Messi. Obviously every part of that statement can be argued with, but hopefully it feels a little bit true. And obviously, using the World Cup final as the ultimate tie-breaker doesn’t do justice to such a complicated question. But it’s mighty tempting.

Beyond the rankings, it’s the contrast in styles that makes this so interesting: not just a footballing contest but a meditation on what it means to grow old, and what it takes to stay this good. Age has come for so much of Messi’s game, and yet the crucial parts are all still there: the quick mind, the stabbing, slicing feet, the ability to beat defenders not by outpacing them but by slowing them down, slowing them down, putting them into just the right place, and then clipping through them. Poor Joško Gvardiol. It was all going so well.

Mbappé, 23 years old and in the prime of his footballing life, is quicker than almost anybody in the world over 10 yards; Messi, still, over ten inches. Mbappé loiters and then tears an entire flank apart; Messi ambles and shuffles, looking for half a yard here, half a glimpse of goal there. It’s an odd beast, international football. At some point on Sunday, in this most important and frantic of occasions, the two most dangerous players on the pitch will be walking quietly around and minding their own business. True greatness is all in the waiting.

That’s How You Do A World Cup

Of all the praise thrown at Morocco over the last few weeks, one nagging question remained. Near-perfect and relentless in defence, to the point that no opposition player had scored past them all tournament, but… just suppose some opponent did manage to get through. What then? Could they chase a game?

Well we got the answer. A resounding Yes, and also a quiet, whispered No. This close, appallingly close, but no further. And the bitter irony of this defeat is that the opening goal came during the first 20 minutes, in which Morocco, for the first and only time in the tournament, were not looking themselves.

Romain Saïss is Morocco’s captain, and had been brilliant all tournament. He was also clearly unfit, a problem that Walid Regragui attempted to mitigate by shifting to a back five. The consequences was 20 minutes in which the World Cup’s best organised team looked a bit of a mess and went one goal down. After Saïss found himself outsprinted by Giroud, the jig was well and truly up. Morocco took him off, switched back to their best shape, and then they were in the game.

That crucial spell aside, Morocco’s entire run to the semi-finals has been a masterclass in tournament football. Find a way to play that makes the best of your best and covers for your weaknesses. Buy into it. Give thanks for it. Run yourselves into the ground for it. Get your mum along to enjoy it with you. Perhaps Azzedine Ounahi, currently playing for Angers, truly is an undiscovered great-in-waiting. Or perhaps he was here elevated by the perfect intersection of system with vision and motivation with momentum, that platform that only tournament football can provide.

Whatever else they make of the World Cup, we must hope that it always provides this opportunity, for the right person in the right place to become more than they ever thought possible. Just for a few weeks, just while the magic lasts. Morocco had a squad’s worth, each outdoing the other. And look, Sofyan Amrabat even wrote a little poem about it all:

RETRO CORNER

Not ever so retro, but no real alternative: here’s France vs. Argentina from 2018. Funny, really. We wrote all that stuff up there about France being obdurate and solid and here Argentina stuck three on them. Still, that Pavard strike is just as perfect as you remember it being.

HAT TIP

“When the two nations confront each other, most of the players on the pitch will be carrying stories of migration. There has been a consistent pattern of Moroccan migration to Europe, particularly Belgium, France and Spain, over the past decades, and the team reflects that. [ … ] France’s players are also mostly from immigrant families. Many could have chosen to play for a parent’s homeland but opted, instead, for France. [And] for decades, the French team has been alternately celebrated and vilified for representing a multi-ethnic France.”

COMING UP

The women’s Champions League group stage rumbles on, with Arsenal vs. Lyon probably the highlight of today’s schedule. And in Scotland, Rangers host Hibernian as the Scottish Premiership returns.

Andi Thomas will be back tomorrow.