Deschamps completes historic hat-trick
MOSCOW — Didier Deschamps walked into the interview room in the bowels of Luzhniki Stadium and prepared to answer questions for the first time as coach of a World Cup champion.
The 49-year-old joined Brazil’s Mario Zagallo (1958-62 as a player, 1970 as manager) and West Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer (1974, 1990) as the only men to play for and coach a global champion.
A noise to his right caused Deschamps to turn, and his players rushed in.
A bare-chested Benjamin Mendy jumped onto the table in front of Deschamps, and Florian Thauvin leaped up, too.
Olivier Giroud and probably a dozen more giddy buddies sprayed their boss with bubbly, beer, cola and water, singing “On est champions (We are champions)!”
“This is the third time I got changed, and I still smell just as bad,” Deschamps said.
He lifted the trophy as his nation’s captain following the first title on home soil in 1998, and now he watched Hugo Lloris raise it in a Russian downpour following Sunday’s 4-2 win over Croatia.
“Well, I don’t really like to talk about myself, but I’m going to be forced to do so a little bit, of course,” Deschamps said.
“I had the immense pleasure and immense privilege to live through this as a player 20 years ago, and it was in France, so of course it will be marked in my memory forever. But what the players did today is just as beautiful.”
His players had to be brawny. They lifted Deschamps after the match and tossed him into the air, over and over.
“They’ve always been a little bit mad, my players,” he said.
Deschamps was a defensive midfielder for Nantes, Marseille, Bordeaux, Juventus, Chelsea and Valencia from 1985-2001, winning the Champions League with Juve in 1996 and the 2000 European Championship with France in addition to the World Cup.
He coached Monaco, Juventus and Marseille before taking over France in 2012.