Dortmund (Germany).- Didier Deschamps came off the bench irritated with ten minutes left and already with 1-1 on the scoreboard to demand more moves from his forwards, especially Giroud, who had just come off before Lewandowski converted the Polish penalty. France was playing a gray game against a rival that only had honor at stake, already eliminated after losing to Netherlands and Austriawho prowled the French area and contained his own, while Mbappé suffered a blow to that broken nose and spent a minute walking, touching the affected part and pointing out to the Polish man who had hit him. His anger passed, as no recrimination was detected in the final hugs..
The first French sentence was a joke. An opening match against Austria resolved by an imbalance of the Real Madrid attacker who was introduced a rival in the goal (1-0), a goalless draw against the Netherlands (0-0) and another against the eliminated Poland (1-1), surely the worst of all. “We did the right thing by creating opportunities to win. We could have done better in terms of efficiency, even the goalkeeper made very good saves and was MVP. We would have liked to take cover with a two-goal lead but we couldn’t,” said Deschamps, that focuses on the areas and not on the staging of a team that failed to control the match and left transitions to Poland: 18 French shots for ten Poles.
One of the first symptoms was seen in the stands from Dortmund. The French fans were crushed by the Polish team, active and motivated mainly in the final moments, harangued by the gestures of a Lewandowski who asked them for more effort. There were moments of silence, of passivity, signed by the final cold greeting compared to the one Poland received.. From the outside you wouldn’t know from the joy of their fans who had made it to the next round. The coach was not spared from criticism in the questions in the press room either., especially those that referred to the game and offensive capacity in this first phase. “The sterile French team is moving down a dangerous path in Euro 2024,” headlines L’Équipe.
“I’m not disappointed”Deschamps began. “It was a difficult group. You laughed at Austria and they finished first… Now another competition begins. The sensations of the first phase often have nothing to do with those of the second.”, he acknowledged, in a press conference, laughing, because the coach used irony to talk about the performance of the substitutes or Griezmann’s non-starting position. There were doubts about whether Deschamps’ jokes, who even hesitated to a journalist who asked him in Englishwere the result of his folksy character or the distance he wants to take from an uncomfortable feeling, that of his unconvincing France.
“If we score more goals, we have a better chance of winning games. I would be much more worried if we didn’t have opportunities”, he explained insistently. Those goals to date have only been generated by Mbappé. Against Austria, he made it 1-0 while against Poland he converted the penalty. A striker who became desperate again and again, and not only with that mask that prevents his visibility: During the hydration break he needed to take it off and wipe away the sweat that got into his eyes and reduced his visibility.
Beyond the protective device, Mbappé barely connected with the French game despite trying up to six times. Four shots at goal, two of them quite clear but that were stopped by Łukasz Skorupski, the penalty and another that went wide. The forward was nervous in some actions in which his teammates did not give him the ball, cornered on the left side despite playing as a nine or leaving the zone to participate in the game. Despite this, Mbappé was the best of a France that does not accompany him and that generates doubts for the crosses while Deschamps, older than the black thread on the French bench, laughs it off. He is a world champion and runner-up with most of these players.
