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It's the World Cup soon, and it's time to talk about these guys (actual squad may not match photo)::focal(1279x647:1281x645)/origin-imgresizer.eurosport.com/2021/06/05/3147038-64496488-2560-1440.jpg) Who is the French National Team, and why do they matter? 1) A History of French players France isn't just known for fighting constantly up until 1945, turns out they've produced some pretty good football players over the years. Raymond Kopa  Just Fontaine  Raymond Kopa won French league titles with Stade Reims in 1953, 1955, 1960 and 1962, and in between he helped take France to a third-place World Cup finish, win the Ballon D'Or in 1958 and the European Cup with Real Madrid. Just Fontaine won French First Division titles in 1960 and 1962 with Raymond Kopa, playing for Stade Reims, but he's most known for his single World Cup tournament in 1958 when he scored 13 goals which still puts him at fourth all-time in the tournament. Raymond Kopa was the consensus best French player for decades until the ascendance of this cursed individual:  While he's mainly known now for a lot of bizarre and extremely corrupt decisions during his tenure at UEFA (we'll get back to them), Michel Platini was France's best player in the 80s without a doubt. Part of Saint-Etienne's last title-winning team in 1981, he went to Juventus where he won a European Cup in 1985 and three straight Ballons D'Or from 83-85. But his greatest achievement on the field was the European Championship in 1984, when he scored a record 9 goals to take France to its first-ever international football title. His goal-scoring total stood until 2020 when some old Portuguese dude named Cristiano Ronaldo broke it. Still, none of these guys are considered France's greatest-ever, who if you ask just about anyone is this guy and my personal favourite player:  Most known for That Champions League goal, scoring two in the 98 World Cup final, and his last ever game including a panenka on Gigi Buffon and a red card for headbutting Marco Materazzi, Zidane was and to just about everyone still is France's all-time greatest player. After he retired in 2006, France spent years churning through anyone who might be able to play the #10 role in a desperate search for the next Zidane. This includes players like Newcastle legend Hatem Ben Arfa, Manchester City legend Samir Nasri and Milan legend Yoann Gourcuff, none of which could make it work. One of France's current best players of his generation is out of this edition with some kind of injury - I'm of course talking about Manchester United legend, WC 2014 Young Player Award winner, witch doctor curse aficionado and master of the dab Paul Pogba: :format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48536735/GettyImages-503606748.0.jpg) The other current player worth mentioning, for football and non-football reasons, is this year's Ballon D'Or winner Karim Benzema:  Long overshadowed by the previously-mentioned Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema lead both La Liga and the Champions League in goalscoring last season while winning a La Liga/Champions League double, earning him his first-ever Ballon D'Or. It's amazing to see what he's capable of since he was able to put his minor legal troubles behind him. 2) A History of France at the World Cup 1958 - 3rd place 1962 - did not qualify 1966 - group stage exit 1970 - did not qualify 1974 - did not qualify 1978 - group stage exit 1982 - fourth place, 82 West Germans solidify their spot as cuntiest international team of all time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSnGCoFKKRA&t=76s 1986 - third place 1990 - did not qualify 1994 - did not qualify 1998 - champions 2002 - group stage exit 2006 - 2nd place 2010 - group stage exit 2014 - quarterfinal loss 2018 - champions 3) The current team This is getting plenty long already, so let's get to the team: Keepers: Hugo Lloris (Tottenham) (captain) Alphonse Areola (West Ham) Steve Mandanda (Rennes) Not much to say about the keepers - Mandanda spent 14 of the last 15 years at Marseille so it's very strange to see him at Rennes, but he's 37 years old and was never as good internationally as he was for Marseille so the third spot is probably a good spot for him. Areola is only in the second spot because the planned backup, and future #1, Mike Maignan (AC Milan) is out with an injury and no I'm not mad at all. Lloris will be the first-choice because he's the best of the three and he's been the first-choice for 12 years so why stop now. Defenders: Raphael Varane (Manchester United) Dayot Upamecano (Bayern Munich) Presnel Kimpembe (PSG) Ibrahima Konate (Liverpool) William Saliba (Arsenal) Benjamin Pavard (Bayern Munich) Lucas Hernandez (Bayern Munich) Theo Hernandez (AC Milan) Jules Kounde (Barcelona) There's been some turnover from 2018 - notably absent are Samuel Umtiti who basically bargained the rest of his career to play in 2018 and has never been the same since, Djibril Sidibe is no longer very good now that he's not part of an extremely stacked Monaco team and Benjamin Mendy has just vanished, I don't know what happened to him but let's never mention him again This is a pretty good selection though. It's about time Theo Hernandez started getting regular call-ups and it's definitely not like France has any better left-backs. We'll see if Varane can stay healthy. Midfield: Youssouf Fofana (Monaco) Matteo Guendouzi (Marseille) Adrien Rabiot (Juventus) Aurelien Tchouameni (Madrid) Eduardo Camavinga (Madrid) Jordan Veretout (Marseille) Not a single one of these midfielders was part of the 2018 team. Notably absent, of course, are both Paul Pogba (pictured above) and N'Golo Kante, who papered over so many cracks since 2016 in every team he played for his body has given out and like his midfield partner has become permacrocked. What's remarkable here is they may not be needed - Tchouameni and Camavinga are extremely capable alternatives to Madrid's other midfielders, Adrien Rabiot is having a wild career at Juventus and Guendouzi has been the best player at Marseille since he arrived last year on loan from Arsenal. While there may not be world-beaters of Kante's caliber it's a solid midfield. Forwards: Karim Benzema (Madrid) Kingsley Coman (Bayern) Ousmane Dembele (Barcelona) Olivier Giroud (AC Milan) Antoine Griezmann (Atletico) Kylian Mbappe (PSG) Christopher Nkunku (Leipzig) Dembele seems to have returned from permacrock status, possibly because EA no longer has the FIFA license so he has nothing to play at home. Deschamps has finally decided to call Benzema up again after not at all from 2014-2020, I'm sure there was no reason Other than that, fairly expected group. You gotta take Mbappe, plus Deschamps knows what he's getting with everyone else, and Giroud has been very good since transferring to Milan last year. The Manager: Didier Deschamps is still in charge, taking over from Laurent Blanc in 2012. He has been France's longest-tenured and most successful manager so it generally makes sense, and hasn't had the trainwrecks some other French managers have (see below) 4) Odds and ends: Well they've been pretty good for the most part since they won in 1998 but they're not just fun to watch on-field, they have more off-field shenanigans than any other major international team. At half-time in a group-stage match against Mexico in World Cup 2010, striker Nicolas Anelka got into a verbal altercation with Domenech where Domenech alleges he said ""Go gently caress yourself, you son of a whore." Anelka refused to apologize, squad management sent him home, and in training after the match the squad sat on the bus and refused to train. Anelka and the team to this day insisted he never actually said that, and said something much tamer, but the press went wild with it for years until Domenech admitted in a 2018 documentary that the team was right all along and Anelka had never said what the press claimed. It's worth noting that Anelka and the team's story has never changed in that time. When the squad for World Cup 2014 was announced, Manchester City midfielder Samir Nasri was not on the squad, leading his girlfriend to go on a profanity-laden tirade on Twitter against the French Football Federation and Didier Deschamps, leading to Nasri basically being blacklisted from the team. She also later hacked his social media and introduced the world to the Drip Doctors which I can't possibly do justice to here. In 2015, word got out that someone got hold of a sextape involving French international player Mathieu Valbuena and were blackmailing him, and investigation eventually revealed the would-be blackmailers were long-time friends of 2022 Ballon D'Or winner and also French international Karim Benzema. The case was finally concluded in 2021, Benzema got a one-year suspended sentence for his involvement. In 2018, the year France won the World Cup, midfielder Adrien Rabiot was selected but refused the call-up because he thought he was more tactically astute than Didier Deschamps, who would not use him to his maximum potential. At EURO 2020, Kylian Mbappe missed a penalty kick that cost France the game and knocked them out of the tournament, which led to Mbappe's family getting into a shouting match with Adrien Rabiot's mom (and agent, lol). Rabiot's mom also yelled at Paul Pogba's family for a mistake of his that led to a late goal in said game. This year, the older brother of Paul Pogba went on a wild social media tear, relating to some kind of blackmail issue, that included allegations of Paul visiting a witch doctor to curse some of his international teammates and attempt to supernaturally influence the outcome of EURO 2016 (it didn't work). The French national team is insane, a constant circus and clownshow, but somehow also phenomenally talented and it's kind of amazing they can pull it together at all, which is why they're worth a watch - in any other tournament, since it turns out the reason this sham of a World Cup is where it is, is because (allegedly) the president of France and Michel Platini put pressure on FIFA to vote for it so that Qatar could invest in Paris Saint-Germain and buy billions of dollars in military hardware. Sorry for the length! Somebody fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Nov 10, 2022 |
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Nov 10, 2022 02:28
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:59 |
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France is likely to either go all the way or lose in the group stage through something utterly ridiculous, it's the way of Les Bleus I just hope we get more witch doctor allegations from the older Pogba down the road
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Nov 10, 2022 18:05
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they won in 2018 without a proper right-back too iirc, Pavard's mainly a centre-back deschamps was doing a weird thing where he had a four-man defense of all CBs - Sidibe did play some on the right and so did whoever was playing LB but I can't remember the guy. They did use a lot of L. Hernandez - Varane - Umtiti - Pavard and all those guys are centre-backs kante is a big loss in midfield but deschamps can be tactically flexible so it might not matter too much.
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Nov 10, 2022 22:10
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Clauss is in questionable health atm (or at least the coaching staff thinks so) which isn't really what you want when you've only got one guy who can play right-sided in a 3 CB system Deschamps has made some odd choices but given the circumstances I don't know that this is one of them
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Nov 11, 2022 23:27
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in 2002 they went winless in the group stage and failed to score so that's about what I assume, especially if the squad keeps getting hurt before the thing even starts
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Nov 15, 2022 23:51
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a certain superstair known definitively for witch doctor curses is getting his revenge on a team going to the world cup without him it's obviously this
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Nov 19, 2022 22:38
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tristeham posted:nice start. hope varane will be ready for the next one though DD will want to look at some proper right-backs/wingbacks for 26 because Pavard seems to be needing a replacement
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Nov 23, 2022 01:38
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:59 |
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I think Mbappe's all right but his family management sucks I also support all of his "gently caress you sponsor" endeavours for the national team and the FFF can eat poo poo imo
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Dec 6, 2022 14:27
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