France beat Morocco 2-0 in Foxborough on July 9 to reach a third straight World Cup semifinal, the same scoreline by which they knocked out the Atlas Lions in the 2022 semifinal in Qatar. And Didier Deschamps has confirmed this will be his last tournament in charge after 14 years at the helm. But the win extends what CBS Golazo analyst Ian Paul Joy calls the defining trait of this French generation.
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“Big personalities, big characters, very difficult,” Joy said on the CBS Sports Golazo broadcast. “Let’s not forget that France have had a problem with that in the past. The federation has basically made it clear to every single person who comes in and around Clairefontaine… if you’re in that training facility, you understand that you’re a part of this group. The group is one. The team is the star. It’s not about individual stars.”
Clairefontaine, the federation’s national training institute about 40 miles southwest of Paris, has run on that philosophy since it opened in 1988. Right now, in practice, this comes down to how Deschamps runs the room.
He talks to unhappy players one-on-one instead of letting things and ego fester, and there’s not much of a gap in how starters and bench players get treated day to day. Former France defender Raphaël Varane has said Deschamps talks constantly, to the group and privately, to get across that message: “we needed each other.” Deschamps himself has framed his staff’s real job at a tournament as making sure no one feels sidelined enough to check out mentally, even a player who never gets off the bench.
“We can go back to Karim Benzema,” Joy added. “He would have been a part of a World Cup-winning side had he not obviously had his problems with the coach.”
Benzema wasn’t a marginal player France could afford to lose. He went on to win the Ballon d’Or in 2022 and lifted five Champions League titles with Real Madrid, and by the time the 2018 World Cup came around, he was still one of the world’s elite strikers. Yet he wasn’t in Russia when France won it. The split traces back to a legal case involving former teammate Mathieu Valbuena in late 2015. Deschamps left Benzema out of the squad shortly after, and the relationship between the two never really recovered.
Joy then also pointed to the importance of a coach who earns his players’ trust.
“Respect is everything in our game,” he said. “If he gets the respect of the group, and that’s from one to all the way to 26th player, then you’ve got every chance of creating success because team chemistry is better than individuals.”
That principle has run through Deschamps’ entire tenure, the longest and most decorated in French football history. Since taking charge in July 2012, he’s won the 2018 World Cup and the 2021 UEFA Nations League, and reached two more finals: Euro 2016 and the 2022 World Cup, lost on penalties to Argentina. He’s one of only three men, along with Brazil’s Mário Zagallo and West Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer, to have lifted the World Cup as both captain and head coach.
France now waits on the winner of Friday’s Spain-Belgium quarterfinal for the July 14 semifinal at Arlington’s AT&T Stadium. Joy thinks the edge lies in a squad where all 26 players know the team comes first, a principle Deschamps must be hoping can carry the team to one last trophy before he steps away.
