“Didier Deschamps, coach without great genius, is nonetheless one of the best coaches in history”

Lhe contract of Didier Deschamps at the head of the French team has been extended until July 2026, without much surprise. After the failure of Euro 2021, the course of the French team in Qatar has placed it in a comfortable position, with no other competition than that – too virtual – of Zinédine Zidane.

Three finals of major tournaments out of five played, a world title: the balance sheet, which must also be seen in the perspective of taking office in 2012, in the aftermath of a period of political chaos and sporting slump, suffers little of dispute.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Didier Deschamps is extended at the head of the Blues, between intrigues and heartbreaks at the French Football Federation

Despite everything, a fringe of indomitable detractors does not take off, made up of good connoisseurs of football. Let’s sympathize: their ancient hatred can only be exacerbated by a longevity that gives their pain the character of perpetuity.

Aesthetes and tacticians

This resentment is heightened by the mortification of having been so constantly mistaken about their nemesis, as a result of an original sin: you must never, in football, make a question, whatever it is, a personal matter, because one always loses one’s lucidity there.

We will also defend ourselves from any complacency towards the character: for thirty years, he has taken part in the greatest victories of French football, but also in some of his turpitudes, was a pillar of OM de Tapie and of Doctor Agricola’s Juventus, is now a guardian of the dilapidated temple of the French Football Federation (FFF).

Aesthetes and tacticians converge in reproaching him for his unattractive game plan, his too exclusive culture of the result. However, if they have been systematically bored for ten years in front of the matches of the Blues, the problem comes more from them than from the coach. This will to make oneself unhappy is not very healthy.

As long as football remains a competitive sport and not an artistic discipline, as the outcome of matches will not be decided by a jury, the results must be authentic. At the cost of a daring contortion, some push the “DDtestation” so far as to see, in the defeats in the final of Euro 2016 and the 2022 World Cup, a verdict of failure for Deschamps, ultimately more loser that winner.

Read also: World Cup 2022: relive the stunning final between France and Argentina

You have to have lost your mind a little to consider that these results are mediocre, or to put them down to luck, or even to say that with this pool of players, capable of overcoming all the vagaries of this sport, everything was needed earn.

O amnesia of the dark years of selection, yet not so old, o ignorance of the number of great nations who can bitterly envy such careers, o spoiled youth who do not measure the exceptional character of the recent period…

You have 40.18% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.

source site-28