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Sport

Les Bleus out : what lessons can be learnt ?

By Etienne Bennequin
10/07/2014

Last Friday, after reaching the quarter finals and scoring ten goals against three conceded, the French team lost by one goal to nil against Germany. So what has this World Cup taught us?

 

1.     There is no almighty taking care of Les Bleus’ destiny

Let’s review what the Bleus did in the last six World Cups. In 1994, they were not even able to earn their flight to the USA. In 1998, they came back with the trophy. In 2002, they were out after the first stage without scoring a single goal. In 2006, they reached the final after a fantastic epic. In 2010, they embarrass themselves by boycotting their training and were out in the group stages again.

You see what’s going on here, don’t you? There is a seemingly infallible rule: les Bleus fail one World Cup – and fail it really badly - and at least reach the final in the next one. So, technically they were practically insured a place in the final this year…

No. That’s not how things work. Throw away all your voodoo trinkets and face the facts that this is just a football team and there is no supreme spirit guiding their destiny to switch between mediocrity and outright brilliance every four years. Sometimes, the French team just plays well and is outdone by a better playing team. And this time it was the German team that subsequently humiliated the Brazilian by winning 7-1.

2.     This team is still inexperienced

Please don’t let me be misunderstood, there are plenty of ways to “play better“, and by that I don’t mean that Germany played a nicer, cooler and more technical football. They played better thanks to their greater experience. Because the average number of games that the footballers have played in their respective national team is 43.5 for the German and 23 for the French, and it was easily seen on the field. In fact Germany scored after a generously given free kick and a lucky header from Hummels. This unlikely goal in the 13th minute was unfortunate for the French but they had a sufficiently long time to catch up. Except that German expertise made them ineffective. They fell in every German trap and finally only had 13 attempts on goal – which is very low for a team that was chasing the game for 80 minutes.

3.     The French are allowed to hope

Les Bleus were definitely too young and naive for this World Cup.

Some fun facts: Only 4 out of 18 French players in this World Cup took part in a previous one. This team is one of the youngest of the tournament with the average age being 26. In reality, it is in fact even younger. Think about the key players. Lloris and Matuidi are 27, Benzema is 26, Sakho is 24, Griezmann is 23, Varane and Pogba are 21. There are many reasons to think that these men are going to improve in the next four years and this leaves us with great hopes for 2018.

COMMENTS:

24/03/2015 - i8q2wxqopim said :

Great post!

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