Eight years is long enough to let the noise settle. Long enough to stop arguing about whether France were boring and start asking something more interesting: how exactly did Didier Deschamps take one of the most talented squads in World Cup history and actually win the thing? The Athletic has revisited that summer in Russia — and the answer, as ever, is more complicated than 'pragmatism' alone.
Every France fan has had the argument. The manager who won the 1998 World Cup as a player won the 2018 edition as a coach — and still, somehow, spent most of the tournament being told he was wasting his own squad. Deschamps' system was compact, disciplined, and built to absorb pressure before releasing it at pace. Critics called it cautious. The trophy cabinet calls it something else.
The Athletic's retrospective leans into the tension between Deschamps' structure and the individual quality he had available — and finds that the two were never really in conflict. The shape protected the players who needed protecting. It freed the ones who could hurt you.
Antoine Griezmann finished the tournament as France's top scorer and set-piece architect — a fact that tends to get buried under the Mbappé headlines. His role was the connective tissue of the whole operation: pressing trigger, link man, penalty taker, free-kick specialist. Deschamps built the system around a player who would do the unglamorous work without complaint, and Griezmann delivered it at the highest level the game offers.
That he was also quietly brilliant — his movement in the final against Croatia was exceptional — made France functionally very difficult to stop.
Kylian Mbappé was 19 years old and already the most frightening forward at the tournament. His pace in behind was the release valve the whole system needed — and his performance against Argentina in the round of 16 announced, loudly and permanently, that something genuinely new had arrived in world football. He didn't just score twice; he made defenders look like they were running in sand.
Deschamps, to his credit, never asked Mbappé to be anything other than exactly that. No defensive responsibility, no tactical complexity — just run, receive, and hurt people. It worked.
Paul Pogba's contribution is the most contested part of the 2018 narrative. His goal against Croatia in the final — a long-range strike that made it 3-1 — was a moment of genuine quality. His overall influence across the tournament was real, if uneven. The retrospective treats him fairly: a player who gave Deschamps control in midfield without always providing the dynamism his club career promised. Russia was probably his best tournament in a France shirt. That it coincided with the right system around him is not a coincidence.
Deschamps never asked Pogba to be the main man. He asked him to be reliable. For six weeks in 2018, he was.
France haven't won a major tournament since. They reached the 2022 World Cup final — Mbappé's hat-trick in Lusail remains one of the great individual final performances — and lost on penalties. The 2018 squad's achievement looks, with distance, even more complete: a team that knew exactly what it was, executed it without flinching, and lifted the trophy in Moscow.
Deschamps didn't try to be Pep Guardiola. That, in the end, was the whole point.
Eight years is long enough to let the noise settle. Long enough to stop arguing about whether France were boring and start asking something more interesting: how exactly did Didier Deschamps take one of the most talented…
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The Athletic — Football
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“Stays on World Cup — different angle, same beat.”
INTRonald Koeman had zijn WK-selectie op 25 mei willen bekendmaken. Dat wordt 27 mei. Twee dagen, geen uitleg — en precies genoeg ruimte om je af te vragen wat er nog niet zeker is.
“Stays on World Cup — different angle, same beat.”
INTRonald Koeman had zijn WK-selectie op 25 mei willen bekendmaken. Dat wordt 27 mei. Twee dagen, geen uitleg — en precies genoeg ruimte om je af te vragen wat er nog niet zeker is.
