Why did Deschamps throw his three-man defense into the dustbin of history?

RIP small dead and buried system. It’s around 5 p.m. on Wednesday when The Team announced in preview that Jonathan Clauss, however of all the last gatherings in Blue, would not be on the trip to Qatar, that we felt the strange aroma of the great renunciation of Didier Deschamps. That of an animation in 3-4-3/3-4-1-2 that we throw in the trash like a vulgar ball of paper, without any other form of trial. Just think if Clauss is not, he, the modern piston par excellence, how could it be otherwise?

The confirmation fell three hours later, on the set of Gilles Boulleau on TF1: no JC in the list of the holy father, no more than Lucas Digne or Ferland Mendy elsewhere. Instead, a whole shovelful of training central defenders, eight to be exact, out of the nine in total who will leave for the World Cup. In the wake of his announcement, Didier Deschamps came to explain this choice at a press conference. Without beating around the bush or playing the mysterious: “I confirm it, we will leave with a four-man defense”. Of which act.

“We will have to defend well, defend better”

More than two years after having revolutionized his system of thought as much as his tactical system – remember, it was an evening in November 2019 in Albania for a 2-0 victory for the Blues – and a week away from flying to the Qatar, Deschamps therefore decides to suddenly backtrack. Should we see the traces of the trauma of Bucharest during the last Euro, with this three-way defense completely outdated for almost half time against the Swiss, which in the end will cost the Blues a painful elimination? Possible.

The legend says that, that evening, the coach would have yielded to the whims of some of his executives who preferred this tactical system. From this unfortunate Euro, the 98 and 2018 world champion also seems to have retained a deep resentment, to the point of ironizing about the general excitement that was floating in the air before the start of the competition. “In 2021 we were the most beautiful, the strongest, we didn’t even need to enter the field to win the competition,” he said, half ironic, half annoyed.

But then, why put this system back on the carpet and work it hard for more than a year to finally throw it into oblivion when it’s time to go back to the coal? Because this is how his Blues overthrew Belgium and beat Spain at the end of 2021 to win their first Nations League. “We have done very good things in this system, he conceded. But we were also in difficulty. We have very often been out of balance and I know only too well that to exist in a big competition, if you are not solid defensively… You will have to defend well, defend better, not to the detriment of the offensive animation, but if I made this choice it is because I am convinced that it is the most suitable. I made different player choices based on that system. »

A four-man defense and 12,000 questions behind

At the time, DD justified this tactical mini-revolution by a desire to offer “other possibilities on the sides, another animation and another balance, by putting Griezmann between the lines, behind two attackers in the axis ” . Shaken by the failure against the Nati and cornered by the packages of his two sure guys in the midfield, Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté – not to mention the Varane case, his other pillar of 2018, just back from injury and in dire need of playing time – the guy suddenly decided to change gear. The comfort and freedom of the front three will wait, the goal is first to close shop in Doha. Asked what he intended to do this winter with the attacking trio that the world envied us, Deschamps replied that we were asking too much of him.

“One of those players moving to the side is an option, yes,” he said. But there are others. The ideal is to put all the players in the best position. But there may be some small changes. I know how we’ll start [contre l’Australie, le 22], provided that nothing negative happens in the meantime. »

If he knows, we don’t. With the profile of the lumberjacks named in the 25 to fill the middle of the field, we dare not imagine a return to the middle of three. The problem is that otherwise, in a flat 4-4-2 for example, it would then be necessary to evolve with four offensive players, which is not about to happen as he repeated to us on Wednesday . “The balance is more random that way. So no. I’m not saying that it can be an option during the match, but above all a match no… These are not cones in front, it’s not the Playstation! If you have the ball, no worries, but if you don’t… You also have to resolve the defensive balance. It’s not because you put in more attackers that you’re going to put in more goals. »

Grizou in the triangle in the middle?

Unless, unless… Unless La Déche pulls out a surprise for us from behind the bundles. A rabbit in a hat named Griezmann in the middle. Listen instead: “Antoine is in an attacking role but he has this ability to have a high volume of play. And even when he is attacking, that does not prevent him from coming back very low, sometimes too much for my taste. In his club he does it too. At times he changes position and finds himself in a triangle in the middle of the field, that is not a problem for him. »

Faithful soldier of Didier Deschamps, Grizou is indeed able to sacrifice himself for the good of the collective as long as the candy at the end of the stick is to his liking. The first training sessions at Clairefontaine next Monday and Tuesday will perhaps give us the beginning of an answer. In the meantime, it will be nice to spend hours on this list that looks like a philosophical back-pedalling, when it comes to reckoning, it is the coach and he alone who will pay the bill. “I have confidence in these players,” he repeated several times on Wednesday in the TF1 auditorium. It only remains for all of us to embark with him.