A friendly match, “it’s also about being confronted with difficulties, and reacting to them collectively”, launched Didier Deschamps on Friday, on the eve of this France-Germany. What could then have seemed like a precautionary measure of language turned out, twenty-four hours later, to be a correct intuition. But did the French coach imagine that the difficulties would be so great, and the collective reaction so insufficient?
Because in Décines (Rhône), the Blues suffered as rarely. No doubt we have to go back to the first failed period of the 2022 World Cup final, against Argentina, to find the image of a French team that is so out of control, to say the least, unrecognizable. And this time, there was no miracle to save the furniture in the final moments, even if German defender Antonio Rüdiger hit his own bar on one of the last French offensives (89e).
A team like France does not foil without reason and, if it struggled so much, it is firstly because Germany pulled out all the stops. And this from the first seconds, on a kick-off which became ” masterstroke “, to quote the German coach, Julian Nagelsmann. The action deserves to be described: Kai Havertz passes the ball to the returning Toni Kroos who steps back a little, attracting the French midfielders, then releases a bell pass for Florian Wirtz, who left in the interval. The French defense does not go up against the Bayer Leverkusen midfielder who concludes with talent, with a powerful strike (0-1, 1D). A prepared game launch, Kroos then revealed. And a record for Wirtz, now author of the fastest goal (7 seconds) against the French team, ahead of the Englishman Bryan Robson, who scored after 27 seconds during the 1982 World Cup.
Germany, like in its garden
It was a big blow to the head, for the Blues as for the Groupama Stadium, which saw the hoped-for celebration take a bad turn. Twenty minutes of desert followed on the French side. It was hard to believe it: dominant, Germany moved the ball with ease in the midfield, as in its garden, facing the amorphous French, necessarily orphaned by Antoine Griezmann, one of the triggers of French pressing, package for this match . Benjamin Pavard, Dayot Upamecano and Brice Samba had to work in turn to prevent the gap from getting worse. “We were failing, admitted Deschamps after the match. We were not able to rise to the level that the opponent offered us in terms of aggressiveness and determination. »
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