France takes the field this Tuesday (22) against Australia, to defend its world title, just three days after the announcement of Benzema’s muscle injury. There are two sides to this drama.
Coach Didier Deschamps and the fans regret the absence of the newly elected best player on the planet. The newspaper L’Equipe presents a different view, remembering that there is a supposed leadership crisis in the locker room since the return of the Real Madrid star to the national team. Reporters Hugo Delom and Damien Degorre report that a locker room leader says: “Now we have a team of soldiers around Kylian [Mbappé]🇧🇷
It is impressive to see how France loses five references and continues to have special players. Out comes Benzema, Pogba, Kanté, Kimpembe and Nkunku. That leaves Mbappé, Dembélé, Griezmann, Camavinga, Tchouaméni and Upamecano.
There’s a reason for this success that dates back to the 1990s. Generations of players have passed through the Clairefontaine academy, designed by Gérard Houiller. The coach was champion of the Uefa Cup for Liverpool in 2001, and disqualified with France in the qualifiers for the 1994 Cup, suffering two defeats to Israel and Bulgaria, when his place was almost assured.
Clairefontaine has passed through generations from Thierry Henry to Marcus Thuram, son of 1998 champion defender Lilian Thuram. Mbappé was at Clairefontaine between 2011 and 2013, two years before making his Monaco II debut. His younger brother, Ethan, is 15 years old and did not go to the federation’s training center due to his family’s choice. He preferred to do his apprenticeship in Paris.
Apprenticeship. France learned to play football at school. In part, it’s true, because you don’t teach how to be a great player.
It’s impressive how the French and Brazilians are the majority in almost every round of the Champions League. France for training players in the academy, Brazil for extracting from the population the quality that spreads across the planet.
Mbappé is not just an emblem of the ace polished at university. It is also a symbol of the multifaceted France exposed in the old film “Between the Walls of the School”, by Laurent Cantet, in which a teacher deals with lack of education and ethnic conflicts within a classroom.
Mbappé is a black man from Bondy, a northern suburb of Paris, relatively close to Saint-Denis. In Bondy, a year ago, a boy called Aymen, aged 15, was shot dead after having an argument with two brothers aged 17 and 27. Street fight.
Benzema is of Algerian descent.
At the 1998 World Cup, after closing the newspaper, I drove ten minutes to buy sandwiches at a small restaurant near Ozoir-la-Ferrière, where the Brazilian team trained.
At dawn in France there were always three employees, a Tunisian, a Moroccan and an Algerian. They cheered against France and against Brazil. Morocco was in the Cup, in the same group as Ronaldo’s team.
If you have the opportunity to travel, do the exercise of getting off in Paris and going to the center by metro instead of uber. You will see a different city from the Champs-Elysées. It helps to understand why it is said that the French locker room had a hierarchy conflict with Mbappé and Benzema together.
France remain title contenders, even after losing Pogba, Kanté, Benzema, Kimpembe and Nkunku.
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