French team – Bleus – But who will score?

Between them, they have 101 goals for the French team. In two months, Olivier Giroud and Antoine Griezmann set sail. They will not play again for the Blues who lose two of the four best scorers in their history. The French successes of the last decade obviously bear the imprint of a duo whose complementarity and efficiency have made it possible to reach the highest peaks. From 2018, they were accompanied by gigantic Kylian Mbappé during the last two World Cups. The Madrilenian, too, is absent in the month of October. It therefore makes us wonder who will score in the heart of an autumn that we have already known to be more joyous in the French team.

Especially since this sequence full of questions follows a summer where the Blues stood out for their inability to score and even create clear chances during a devilishly boring Euro. The problem is profound: apart from its fantastic trio, and with the exception of Karim Benzema on his return, for ten years the French team has been unable to bring out or impose a fourth man on the landscape. Many of them tried their luck: Wissam Ben Yedder, Moussa Diaby, André-Pierre Gignac, Anthony Martial, Alexandre Lacazette, Florian Thauvin and Nabil Fekir. How many left a mark in Blue with Deschamps? None.

Today, the French team is reaching a tipping point, at a sensitive moment in its history. We must necessarily find recourse otherwise the status of even the vice-world champions will deteriorate. How to keep your ambitions intact without a big scorer? And even if Mbappé will return, everything cannot rest on his shoulders. The real problem is that the next generation, so far, lacks depth. As it stands, the list of the group’s top scorers doesn’t really look great:

For the first time since 2012, an era in the form of a black hole, the France team has none of its elements which exceed 10 goals in the selection. And if, like PSG, we have to count on Dembélé to score, the fate of the Blues seems very fragile in this month of October. If Didier Deschamps tried to anticipate the transition, no head sticks out. Up front, Marcus Thuram breaks everything at the club but is out of his depth in the selection. For Randal Kolo Muani, it’s almost the opposite, but does he have the shoulders to take over from Olivier Giroud? The doubt is real, he who is upside down at PSG.

No member of the Blues attack has a solid enough reference to claim to fill the immense void left by the retirements of Griezmann and Giroud. Except that today, the Blues no longer really have a choice if they want to remain a major nation. The Euro must act as a severe warning. They will not always arrive in the semi-final by offering so little in the game. But the history of the French team is also that of an eternal starting again. Nature hates a vacuum, solutions will necessarily have to be found.

Bradley Barcola, exciting in Paris and during his first selections, but especially Michael Olise, author of 6 goals in his first 9 matches in Munich, perhaps embody the future of the selection more than the others. But they are still in their infancy. Their luck is that now there is a real space to take over even if, between them, they only weigh one goal in Blue…