Can the French football team set a five-year-old record this Monday evening in Belgium? Our apologies to loyal DDball aficionados, this is about dethroning the last worst TV audience for a Blues match, on June 3, 2019 during a friendly against Bolivia (2-0) played in Nantes. Because since this historic evening with 2.95 million viewers on TMC, Lucas Digne’s gang (potentially the only starter against Bolivia to do it again this Monday) had never achieved a score as low as Thursday against Israel (1 -4), with 3.98 million viewers on TF1.
And this disenchantment clearly in the air (- 9,000 spectators at Parc OL between the France-Germany in March 2024 and the France-Belgium last month) is partly explained by the declining enthusiasm for the selected players. The monuments of the 2018 World Cup Hugo Lloris, Raphaël Varane, Olivier Giroud and now even Antoine Griezmann (sniff and sniff again) have in turn retired internationally for less than two years and the next generation is not unleashing the crowds.
Caqueret, Le Fée and Wahi got lost on the way
An observation very far from this music which has accompanied almost every gathering of the Blues and the Bleuets in recent years, both in the media and among followers on social networks: “our reservoir of talent is staggering and endless”. In June 2023, the French squad was thus seen as extremely promising to compete in the Euro Espoirs, between Lucas Chevalier, Castello Lukeba, Maxence Caqueret, Enzo Le Fée, Khéphren Thuram, Rayan Cherki, Amine Gouiri, and even Elye Wahi. Result: a very dry elimination from the quarter-finals against Ukraine (1-3), for which the coach (mocked) Sylvain Ripoll was presented as the sole responsible.
But a year later, among the 23 players in this Euro Espoirs, only Manu Koné, Michael Olise and Bradley Barcola have really joined the A. Because Didier Deschamps continues to prefer Brice Samba and Alphonse Aréola to the probably best French goalkeeper of the moment, namely Lille’s Lucas Chevalier (22 years old), but above all because most of these precocious talents have already been lost along the way, like Caqueret, Le Fée and Wahi. Long cited as a global example, French training, for example, brings out too few creative circles.
“Grizou” trained in Spain, Olise in England
As true as the essential Antoine Griezmann had mainly been trained in Spain, joining Real Sociedad at the age of 14, the new rare glimmer of hope to succeed him, Michael Olise (22 years old, Bayern Munich), was born in London and learned everything in England. And ironically, the current attacking midfielder trained in France and the most convincing at the start of the season, the Monegasque Eliesse Ben Seghir (even more than his teammate Maghnes Akliouche), preferred to opt for the Moroccan selection.
So much so that there is reason to spill your coffee this Monday morning when reading The Teamdiscovering that Didier Deschamps would have chosen to start Mattéo Guendouzi at number 10 and Randal Kolo Muani at the forefront for today’s Nations League meeting in Belgium. In the first leg in Lyon, the presence of two trios, Kanté, Manu Koné and Guendouzi in the middle, as well as Dembélé, Kolo Muani and Marcus Thuram in front, was already enough to terrify all lovers of the beautiful game.
Few French players playing for top European clubs
Aside from the mystery Kolo Muani, who should have around 35 attackers ahead of him in the French hierarchy since his transfer to PSG, we almost want to grant extenuating circumstances to Didier Deschamps regarding this dull selection. Because which players outside of this list can we bet on to dynamize the game of the Blues, certainly victorious against Israel on Thursday after a low-intensity match (1-4)? Kingsley Coman has not scored in the Bundesliga… for a year in a Bayern where Mathys Tel (19 years old) has not yet been able to really break through, and Kylian Mbappé himself has therefore been upside down for many months.
Our file on the French team
Likewise, apart from Aurélien Tchouaméni, William Saliba, Jules Koundé, Marcus Thuram, and to a lesser extent Eduardo Camavinga and Michael Olise, we no longer see an indisputable French player in top form in a top European club. So, it has undoubtedly come time to bury for good this sweet myth of the endless reservoir of dingoes making it possible to field three ultra-competitive French teams, right? And believe us, that’s not the style of the house, 20 Minutesto come to DD’s rescue.
