With vice, Deschamps approaches the end of the most victorious cycle in French history

Since France were world champions in 1998, no country has reached the Cup final more often. There were three: 2006, 2018 and 2022. Two of them, the most recent, are on the account of coach Didier Deschamps.

With the conquest in Russia, in 2018, when he defeated Croatia in the decision, and the runner-up in the current edition, after the defeat to Argentina, this Sunday (18), the coach may be close to the end of one of the most victorious cycles of a coach at the head of a selection.

Directive, impulsive, admiring, superstitious and with a privileged vision of the game, Deschamps became the soul behind the most successful generation in the history of France.

If you expand the historical cut, in the last 24 years, counting the victory over Brazil at home in the 1998 World Cup decision, the French have accumulated four World Cup finals.

Didier Deschamps was part of it all. The former midfielder was captain of the team, technically led by Zinédine Zidane, who scored 2 of the 3 goals in the 3-0 victory over the Brazilians.

Already at the time, the midfielder was already showing part of the personality on the field that would forge the coach who helped transform the French team. He was always captain wherever he went.

The former midfielder had an extremely successful career before hanging up his boots. He twice won the French Championship and a Champions League with Olympique Marseille in the early 1990s, making the team the only French team to date to win the continental trophy.

After becoming a legend in his country, he went to Italy, where he also built an idol for Juventus. Among the titles he collected, he won three Italians, a Club World Cup and reached the Champions League final three times in a row. He lifted the cup in 1995-96.

Together with the German Franz Beckenbauer and the Spaniard Iker Casillas, he forms a select group of captains who have lifted the Champions, World Cup and Euro Cups.

Eleven years after leaving the pitch and already as a coach, with spells at Monaco, Juventus and Olympique, he returned to the French national team in 2012.

It was the beginning of the work that would shape the generation that won the World Cup twice, with names like Hugo Lloris, Varane, Griezmann and Mbappé, to name a few of a list that could be even longer if a series of injuries did not prevent him from taking for Qatar others like Kanté and Pogba.

In these moments of adversity Deschamps showed his strength. In addition to the sensitivity of choosing the right moments for substitutions, as he did throughout this Cup, he also did not hesitate to change the role of his players in favor of the team.

Griezmann is the greatest proof of that. Few other than the French coach could see in the third top scorer of the French national team the piece that could fill the gap of Pogba and Kanté in midfield. But not only did he do that, he saw the striker prove himself to be a true all-rounder.

Not just anyone could do that. You need to know your players well. With ten years at the helm of the squad, being the longest-serving among the coaches who worked at the World Cup in Qatar, Deschamps knew what he was doing.

It is a knowledge he acquired with a unique career in football. He is just one of three names in history to have won the tournament as an athlete and coach. The list includes Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo and the German Franz Beckenbauer.

In Qatar, he was also looking for other brands. One of them is very rare, since only one man has won two World Cup titles in a row, the Italian Vittorio Pozzo, who led Italy twice as champions in 1934 and 1938.

Brazil also has a second consecutive championship, in 1958 and 1962, but in the first it was led by Vicente Feola and, in the second, by Aymoré Moreira.

Deschamps missed this opportunity, but nothing that erases or stains the victorious history he built in football, especially in front of the French national team.