Portugal-France, a traumatized Deschamps Blue

So it is against Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal that the French team will play its quarter-final of Euro 2024, Friday evening in Hamburg. A match that inevitably brings back a bad memory for Didier Deschamps and some of his players. Remember: on July 10, 2016, the Blues faced the Selecçao in the final of “their” Euro. Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud, N’Golo Kanté and Kingsley Coman are already in the game, but they are not the most traumatized.

Among the Blues, the most marked was undoubtedly André-Pierre Gignac who, that day, came very close to offering victory to the Tricolores. While the score was nil-nil, the French striker, in added time, cracked an inspired sequence in the middle of the surface, nevertheless seeing his shot ring the left post of the Portuguese goal. The Blues let their chance slip away. In extra time, Eder found the fault, with the outcome that we know (0-1).

“I didn’t sleep for months.”

A traumatic episode for the former Marseille player, who has been playing in Mexico since 2015, with the Tigres de Monterrey.
“When I see the defender tightening in the axis and the goalkeeper coming out, I try to hit it as best I can in fact. It takes a little bounce, but with a weird effect that hits the post, he said in March 2021 on the airwaves of RMC Sport.
It’s crazy stuff. I don’t know if it’s destiny, I don’t know what you call it.”

“Normally, the ball falls back to Antoine’s feet (Griezmann). It’s crazy when you think about it! Antoine is a meter away from the ball. And with this effect, instead of coming back to him, he goes to the side, it’s crazy…, he added. I didn’t sleep for months. I wasn’t depressed or anything, not to that extent. But the days after the final, when I went back home to Cassis, I dreamed that I had scored the goal and that I was celebrating with my friends…”