France Are World Cup Champions, Vive La France
This team just looks like a World Cup winning team. It’s got star power and veteran leadership. Incredible young players that’ll help usher in the next era of international footy and a manager who had something big to prove. A superb defence with top class central defenders and a brilliant goalkeeper. Big game mentality after past failures, positional awareness across the park.
The talent in this French side stacks up against Germany 2014, against Spain 2010, against Italy 2006. It’s easy to get swept up in the process but take a step back and look at this French team. They’re deserving World Champions. An incredible team, one for the ages.
Along the way they copped a lot of criticism for playing within their abilities, as if every World Cup winner has gone out there and blown the competition away from start to finish. That’s not really how this works. France’s first game was struggle streets against Australia and they built from there, getting better and more confident as things progressed. Down went Argentina in a classic in the round of 16. Uruguay fell before them in the quarters. Belgium in the semis. Now Croatia in the final – for all the talk about the easy side of the draw, the eventual winners had to do it tough the whole way.
Didier Deschamps, now the third man in history after Mario Zagallo and Franz Beckenbauer to win the World Cup both as a player and a manager, made the crucial decision after the Aussie game to chuck Olivier Giroud into the starting XI. Giroud didn’t have a single shot on target all tournament, let alone scoring a goal, but his selfless play up front helped unleash Kylian Mbappe and Antoine Griezmann. It was the final piece of a puzzle that never quite made it to completion at the last European Championships. Six of the starting XI that lost 1-0 to Portugal in extra time there also started the World Cup final. The other five didn’t even make the squad.
Back then N’Golo Kante was an unused sub in the final. Here he was a defensive midfield mastermind all tournament, although an early booking saw him replaced much sooner than expected against Croatia. Back then Paul Pogba was the enigma that he can be, here he overcame an average first half to brilliantly dominate the second and score the third goal. Back then Kylian Mbappe was a kid at Monaco, now he’s one of the most expensive transfers in history and the premier emerging talent of this World Cup. Back then Raphaël Varane, following an excellent 2014 World Cup, was out injured with a thigh knock, here he proved his potential and announced himself as one of the finest defenders on the planet right now. The tales of ascension go on for pages and pages. This is what a World Cup Champion team looks like.
But a champion team needs its opposition and you’ve gotta spare a thought for this incredible Croatian side. They might have peaked at silver but to come out and play this game with so much energy and fierce determination, the same attributes that carried them through back to back to back 120 minute contests through the knockout stages – that’s a whole other game’s worth of football and one played at max fatigue - made for a fantastic match. The first half of this game they ran the show. They were better in possession and more frantic without it, making like difficult for Pogba, Kante, Matuidi and company. That possession advantage they kept up for the whole game.
However the difference here was the same thing that split France and everyone else they played on their way to the top. Their semi-final against Belgium was a remarkably high quality game. The standard of the football on show was on another level to the rest of this tournament (shame we never got to see Belgium vs Croatia). And in the end it was France that ground their opponents down, a Samuel Umtiti goal the splitter. This game was made messier by Croatia’s pressing in their attacking half and for a while there it looked like that intensity was working.
Until it wasn’t. Griezmann was definitely caught for that free kick… but he was also already diving. Bit of a tree falling in the woods situation there, is it still a free kick if you foul a player who’s already diving? You know what, it probably is. And Griezmann’s wonderful delivery from the free kick was what earned that first goal, whipped in off the head of Mario Mandzukic. Ivan Perisic soon levelled up with a rocket of a volley, taking his chance extremely well after he’d started this game as Croatia’s biggest threat, but then the VAR penalty happened and France had a lead they’d never surrender.
Was it a penalty? Of course it was a penalty. His arm is hanging out there and he moves it, instinctively, towards the ball. It blocks a cross from getting through to where there were more French attackers seeking to put a finishing touch on it. That shouldn’t be allowed. And it wasn’t. VAR has had some vocal critics along the way but it worked perfectly fine when it most mattered. If you’re looking for self-fulfilling prophecies then you’ll find things to complain about – it took too long, it wasn’t blatant enough, it wasn’t deliberate, etc. – but that’s on you, not on the ref. It was a penalty.
(Having said that, the rule does need a touch up with that silly ‘deliberate’ thing. It’s kinda common practice in all footy that if you gain an advantage by an inadvertent handball then that’s a handball. One of those situations where the letter of the law isn’t fully in line with the spirit of the game).
In the semis against England, Croatia came from a goal down at the break to win this thing in extra time. That never happened here, France were far more in control of their own game plan than England were. Deschamps seems to have accepted that he’s never going to get this team to play like Barcelona. Antione Griezmann even compared them to Atletico Madrid. Fine by France. What they figured out along the way is that World Cup games, especially late tournament games, are not about ninety minute performances… they’re about the moments. Those individual moments that make all the difference. You either take those rare chances or you lose.
Hugo Lloris made a great save to deny Ante Rebic. Paul Pogba curled in a third after his initial shot was blocked. Kylian Mbappe slammed in a fourth a five minutes later. Those were the moments. Within twenty minutes it went from potentially a 2-2 game to a 4-1 game. Hugo Lloris’ bugger-up didn’t really matter in the end, although it did keep a fascinating game nice and frisky in the closing stages. Plus it took Mandzukic off the hook for his earlier own goal, which is always a relief.
Seriously, this was a classic World Cup Final with a little bit of everything. An own goal. A magnificent volley. A controversial refereeing decision and a penalty. Two lovely finishes from outside the box. A goalkeeping mistake. Political leaders embracing fondly. A politically-charged pitch invasion. Torrential rain just as the dignitaries in suits strolled out for the presentation. The highest scoring final since 1966. The first teenaged scorer in a final since 1958.
All tacked on the end of an excellent World Cup, perhaps the best one in memory, with a worthy bunch of winners. Football, mate. Gotta love it.
If you made it to the end of that then say cheers by slapping an ad
If you wanna support the TNC Revolution then be a mate over on Patreon