One win to go … but Paris parties
IT’S good the French make lots of champagne, because with the trophy-winning potential of its team that will play in the World Cup final on Monday morning (AEST), they could be bathing in the stuff for years to come.
Like Spain’s team that won everything — two European Championships and one World Cup — in an awesome spell of dominance from 2008 to 2012, the youthful, skilful Bleus could have the makings of a dynasty. Why? Let’s count the ways. Heaps of talent, not just on the pitch but on the bench and back in France, too. A defence that defanged the World Cup’s most prolific scoring team, Belgium, in a semi-final so engrossing that 90 minutes seemed to zip past in half that time. Youth, so much youth, running through key positions in the team like an electric current. The average age of France’s starting line-up in the 1-0 victory over Belgium was a shade over 26. Good for many years to come.
And — really he should go at the top of this list — Kylian Mbappe, aka football dynamite and surely the strongest candidate for the World Cup’s best player award. Imagine how much better, how much more polished France’s young diamond will be at age 21, at the 2020 European Championship, or at age 23, at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and on and on. The mind boggles at the potential of the 19-year- old who may be the best deal Paris Saint-Germain ever makes, bought one year ago for $210 million and perhaps worth now double that after four fantastic weeks in Russia.
France’s timing is good, too. Coach Didier Deschamps is getting his pieces to fit just as other football powers in Europe are unravelling.
Portugal, Germany and Spain are in disarray. In short, there’s a vacuum to fill and France is poised to do it.
For months, Deschamps has been playing down expectations by making out that France’s youth was a drawback, not its strength. True, the France team that won the World Cup in 1998 with Deschamps as its captain was considerably older. But the strength of this team is that its young players already have wise heads that belie their tender years.
Just 25, Raphael Varane is a rock in the French defence, with a young man’s speed but the big-game maturity from having won multiple trophies with Real Madrid. With his partner at the back, Samuel Umtiti, still just 24, France has a central defensive pairing that should frustrate attackers long into the future. Umtiti’s
winner against Belgium was only his third goal for France but its quality suggested there could be more where that came from. But how and where to best use Mbappe is a good problem to have. First things first: Win Sunday, turn all this youthful promise into a trophy, so others can follow.