GIROUD WINS WORLD CUP WITHOUT HITTING TARGET!
BUrieD within the glory of France’s triumph is one of the strangest stories in World Cup history, that of the centre forward who won the competition without managing a shot on target. Olivier Giroud of Chelsea played 546 minutes for Didier Deschamps’s glorious team in russia. Though Giroud is never found wanting for effort, he did not score any of his team’s 14 goals and, frankly, did not even come close. As his team-mates danced and sang their way through the interview area at the luzhniki Stadium at around midnight on Sunday, Giroud stopped to weigh up an extraordinary month. ‘it’s a great feeling and, i mean, “it’s coming home” isn’t it?’ he said with a smile, aware that he was in the company of english journalists. ‘Sorry, i had to say that. But honestly it’s a dream come true, a childhood dream. ‘We have been very solid, very strong all the way, until the end. And i think it’s well deserved.’ Giroud, 31, is a strong, bullish forward, a traditional target man in many ways. Maybe that is why he doesn’t always look like a natural fit for Deschamps’s counter-attacking team. Off the pitch, he is softly spoken, and a thinker. ‘All of my career i have been through certain difficulties and i have always tried to make it,’ he said. ‘So yes, it motivates me to get better and better.’ Giroud’s record for France is creditable with 31 goals from 81 games. When asked if he is loved more in France than he has been in the Premier league during his time with Arsenal and Chelsea, he said: ‘no, because i have been criticised a little bit in France as well. Because, for example, i didn’t score in the World Cup. ‘But i have also received a lot of good messages from people who know football well, lots of French supporters. ‘They see the work i do for the team and a lot of people wanted me to score in the final. ‘i said, “yes, i hope so but even if i don’t score and we are world champions it will be the best thing that has happened in my life”. ‘i tried to work for the team and i know what i can bring to the team. ‘it’s the same for my team-mates. it is not one or two players or 11 players, it is 23 and that was the strength of the French team this year.’ As France returned to a welcome by an estimated six million fans yesterday in Paris, few players were being feted more than Manchester United’s Paul Pogba. The 25-year-old had a good World Cup, capped by scoring the third in the final. Pogba grew up watching the 1998 World Cup winners, and believes this France can similarly inspire a new generation. ‘Before the game i said to everybody that we were 90 minutes away from our dream to be world champions, to make history, to make France vibrate in such a way that even the current French children, and the future children of those children, would one day know what we have done. ‘They will know that we could win and that we should win. i dreamed of all of that when i was a kid and now they can dream too,’ Pogba said.