BLEU THUNDER
Griezmann slams Belgium’s taunts over France’s ‘anti-football’ tactics
ANTOINE GRIEZMANN has angrily hit back at claims that France play ‘anti-football’ under Didier Deschamps ahead of tomorrow’s World Cup final with Croatia.
Belgium’s Thibaut Courtois and Eden Hazard both bemoaned what they perceived to be negative tactics by the French during their semi-final defeat, when Samuel Umtiti’s header proved enough despite Deschamps’s side conceding large amounts of possession to their rivals.
But Griezmann insisted it does not matter how Les Bleus go about beating Croatia, so long as they take the trophy back to France for the first time since 1998.
The Atletico Madrid forward said sarcastically: ‘Courtois, he played at Atletico, he was a Spanish champion. With Chelsea, does he believe he is playing the football of Barcelona?
‘I don’t care how (we do it). I want a second star to be on this shirt and, if I have the star, I do not care about the game we have done.’
Meanwhile, Croatia legend Davor Suker last night insisted his countrymen can gain revenge on France by winning the showpiece.
He was part of the Croatia side who were beaten by France in the 1998 semi-final before Les Bleus defeated Brazil in the final.
But Suker, now head of his nation’s soccer federation, said: ‘We’re a small nation but a big nation in football. We made third place (in 1998). Now we can be better.’
HE WILL wear the jersey of France tomorrow but he plays for all of us — like the very greatest of sportsmen, a Pele or an Ali, there can be no boundaries.
That is exactly how I feel about Kylian Mbappe, the 19-year-old destined to be the new global king of our beautiful game.
You hear about some wonderkid or other, you glimpse shots of him doing clever things in big matches; there is the mindboggling transfer fee to PSG then the World Cup stage and you acknowledge we are watching someone truly unique.
It was the same the first time I watched Pele, then a 17-year-old playing in a World Cup final. He was captivating then and that initial impression never changed.
Pele was prodigious, a one-off. He played for Brazil but surely we all thought he came from another planet.
There have been awesome talents since: Johan Cruyff, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, for sure. But for me, and I suspect the majority who grew up with him, only one Pele.
Roll the years forward and the penny clicks again — the look, the style, the speed, the control, truly out of this world. Mbappe.
The young Frenchman will know of Pele of course. He will have been able to watch videos of the great man at work, going back all the way to the final of 1958, which some of us peered at on little screens in black and white.
Mbappe as a person is a stranger to me but he comes across as Pele did. For all the honours and idolatry bestowed on him, Pele was no big-time Charlie but modest with fame.
Mbappe appears to have that similar calm outlook on life, certainly on the field, and that is the only way I can judge him. I like the look.
His football skill is what matters most and is wonderfully similar to Pele’s, devastating to the opposition: unstoppable, unmatchable, performed at frightening but controlled speed of feet and mind and, at its peak, unplayable.
Like Pele, he knows intuitively how to protect himself and in doing that he generally gains the advantage.
He knows what he can do, what he wants to do, which basically is what every other player wants to do but struggles to. Most can’t even get near.
The effect Pele had on the game worldwide and on professionals like myself was considerable and in time, I think Mbappe can have a similar influence across the globe. Every chance I have had to watch Pele live, I have taken, going back to 1966. I failed to make Alf Ramsey’s final England squad but I made the trip to Goodison to watch Brazil and Pele, lose as it happens, against Portugal.
There is a lesson here too that proves how quickly teams can emerge from defeat. The 1966 Brazil team wasn’t their best, they did not get out of their group and Pele was hammered into the turf by the roughest of tackling.
Four years later we watched mesmerised by what I consider to be the greatest Brazil team of them all — which makes them the best team of all time — led by Pele and his attack partner Tostao, the original and most brilliant fox in the box.
Mbappe is turning heads now with runs like we have witnessed in Russia — from one 18-yard line to the other at speed and, as I have said, runs that are unplayable. There are flicks, shots, goals. It is the speed of it all under Mbappe’s control, that is the key.
There have never been faster, pacier finals. Rarely have we admired more athletic, super-fit footballers. In my professional lifetime we have gone from Subbuteo football of the 1950s to Formula One speed. It is epitomised by the group game between Spain and Portugal, a 3-3 draw that left the world breathless as the marker for what we have seen game after game in Russia.
What has happened has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It has developed by players being convinced, forced by their coaches that to be better, to win the prizes, it is achieved not just by being comfortable with the ball but if they are also faster and fitter than the opposition.
Malcolm Allison my old friend, now gone, brought in Derek Ibbotson, the great British middle-distance runner, to introduce Olympian standards of fitness and speed to the Manchester City team he coached with Joe Mercer.
When Malcolm and myself joined forces at Crystal Palace we had the same Beat the Clock training ideals. I used another Olympian, Ron Jones, as I have said in previous columns, to make footballers train with 220m sprints.
They hated it at Palace, Queens Park Rangers, Barcelona and Tottenham. They hated it until they realised they had become so fit they could whistle in training just as Mo Farah now can when he is demolishing world records and winning gold medals.
It is time to relax, sit back and enjoy a final that others can worry and fret about. There is enough talent, in prospect at least, to illuminate the brilliance of our game.
Football was like Subbuteo — it’s Formula One speeds now Pele’s tweet after Mbappe matched his feat of scoring two in a World Cup game as a teenager:
CONGRATULATIONS KYLIAN. 2 GOALS IN A WORLD CUP SO YOUNG PUTS YOU IN GREAT COMPANY!