He could very well have worn the jersey of the Spanish team, the country where he arrived at the age of 4. After some hesitation, Lucas Hernandez preferred blue to red. Good news for his coach, Didier Deschamps. With him, France hardly ever loses and has found their left-back. At 25, the child from Madrid (now at Bayern Munich) talks about his development in the national team, his roots in Haute-Saône and his natural taste for combat.
With the Blues, you only lost one official match, against Colombia during your first selection. Is it harder to beat the France team when you play in defense, like for example your defensive performance in Portugal in November 2020 in the League of Nations?
My ambition is to give everything and always be one hundred percent. Defensively, I try to adapt as well as possible to the team and to what the match demands. I remember the victory in Portugal very well. It had been a very complicated match, which was played for nothing at all with N’Golo’s goal. [Kanté]. You had to be very solid and we were. This is one of our strengths: collectively, we all work very well and that allows us to attack well afterwards.
You brought something to this team that we weren’t used to seeing in French football: this South American “grinta”, this way of not letting go …
It’s true that it’s more of a South American mentality. I was lucky, when I was younger, to have a lot of South American coaches, especially Argentines. They showed me the way to this grinned. I am here to help the team with my qualities and my faults. I’m proud to be who I am, to always fight and to give my all for the team.
Do you feel this uniqueness when you look around you at the other players on the team?
My teammates know me, they know I like to defend. At Bayern, it’s the same. It’s rare to see a player who loves to defend. Normally, soccer players like to attack. Me it’s the opposite. What makes me happy is to defend well. Sometimes they make fun of me by giving me the statistics of my low number of goals. I always answer the same thing: I prefer a defensive tackle to a goal. It’s something that I love, have always loved and will continue to do. It’s my mentality. I love that…
You arrived in Spain when you were 4 years old. You grew up there and were modeled by a club, Atletico Madrid, and a coach, Diego Simeone, atypical. And yet, you have symbolized the Blues of Didier Deschamps for two years. How can you explain that you appropriated this jersey so quickly and so quickly?
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