England-France (1-2): the return of the blue power

Amazing ! Yes, crazy, incredible, crazy and amazing. The world is still blue, four years later. The French team, adorned with glory and qualifying for the semi-finals of the World Cup, with Morocco as a rival, will spend the last week in Qatar, seeking to erase this color code from Russia that she wraps around the planet. . We should not change anything and tell ourselves that the best is yet to come. There will be two more games for partners Hugo Lloris with the idea of ​​playing for the first two places rather than third in a new week for history.

The blues, when they get into the books, should stay there. So it will be France-Morocco, a match between friends, and not only because Kylian Mbappé will find his best friend in football, PSG right winger Ashraf Hakimi. This is an incredible story. Thus, there will be at least one player from the capital club in the final, even if today we would prefer to know that the researcher is preparing this thesis: why does Croatia always oppose France in World Cup finals? ? We would like to read it before Christmas.

And when luck comes…

First we must blame the Blues for not insisting. Every time they advanced in the English camp, increased speed, or found Ousmane Dembele, the Three Lions’ defenses seemed to be strung on a wire, in a fragile gap. Knowing that they systematically take goals, including against less strong ones (Australia, Poland), they should have advanced a little more and faster, and not limit Kylian Mbappe to the role of expanding the English defense in width, its functions for a long time. time.

Harry Kane’s teammates returned with repeated outbursts. Bukayo Saka, with his percussion, posed a problem that the Blues could never solve, except perhaps by mistake. You had to be very strong to endure in the second period, when the Blues lost their thread and intensity, and the England team became more and more united and remained true to the composite portrait that the football police painted upstream: a flashy attack against a gaping defense. Harry Maguire’s header to the post or Saki’s miss at the far post were prologues to the hell that inevitably took market share in the lives of Deschamps’ people.

But the real is what eludes us, and the English will ponder over it for a long time. At the height of their dominance, they conceded a fatal goal from Olivier Giroud, who won the header duel with Maguire, before Kane missed a second penalty, sending him into the Doha skies. It was impossible, and the British did it. We should thank them and gently escort them back to the runway. This is how we reunite with the Blues in major competitions: they have a close-knit and tight-knit team, and sometimes luck, all of which eluded the tactical knowledge of Didier Deschamps, who once again won on his bench. The world is theirs for at least another week, maybe more.