Deschamps seeks spark but remains wary of Messi
in Kazan
Call off the search. France coach Didier Deschamps has already walked off with the award for the most blindingly obvious public statement at this World Cup.
“Messi is Messi,” he said, ahead of his team’s last-16 encounter with Argentina in Kazan today. And in case anyone missed it, he repeated himself not once but twice during a pre-match press conference which redefined the term perfunctory.
Though “Messi is Messi” might qualify as the footballing equivalent of Theresa May’s “Brexit means Brexit”, Deschamps’ point was perhaps lost in his word play. Maybe what he was trying to say was that such is the genius of Argentina’s creative spirit, it makes tactical planning almost an irrelevance. However carefully you prepare, whatever system you develop in a bid to counter him, all he needs is a second to conjure your destruction.
“Hopefully, we will mark and neutralise him, but you know very well he can make the difference with very little,” said Deschamps, rolling his eyes when asked for a fourth time by the collected media how he might stop Lionel Messi.
“I hope to be able to answer your question after the match with a yes,” he added, after being asked if the fact that three-quarters of the France defence play in the same league as the Argentine gives them sufficient familiarity to stop him. He was equally brusque with the reporter who wondered whether Messi’s influence on the Argentina team was similar to Ronaldo’s on the Brazil side that Deschamps helped conquer in 1998.
“Yes, there are similarities,” he sighed. “This player is outstanding. We have to take precautions.”
Deschamps’ gathering irritation was understandable. He does not need telling of the unique threat Messi poses, a threat which was demonstrated with such clarity at the very point his country needed it in Argentina’s critical group stage match with Nigeria. And he is more than aware of the likely response back home in France should his team succumb to the Messi magic. It will not be friendly.
This game will mark Deschamps’ 80th in charge, putting him at the top of the list of France coaches. He has steered his nation to the final of Euro 2016 and the quarter-final of the 2014 World Cup in his six years at the helm. Yet there is a dissatisfaction back home with the direction his team is taking. Replete with potential, it has yet to deliver the style that might be expected.
They may have qualified for the knockout stage, or as Deschamps described it, “the real World Cup”, but it was not with the anticipated fizz and panache. There have been moans about his squad selection –
Today France v Argentina even now questions are being asked (albeit led by Zlatan Ibrahimovic) about why he had left out Karim Benzema.
More pertinently there have been grumbles about why Antoine Griezmann, Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappe, players who the French press and public had assumed would illuminate this tournament, have yet to spark. “Yes, the beginning was a bit difficult for him,” Deschamps said of Griezmann. “All I can say is he’s doing everything to make it happen.”
But Deschamps is more than aware that the most important quality required against Argentina will be defensive concentration. Because were the coach to succumb to his critics and let his players attack at will, without heeding their opponents, Argentina have within their number the man most likely to punish them.
After all, Messi is Messi.