MOSCOW: It seems some people are just meant to be disliked. Didier Deschamps is probably one of them. He was the captain who lifted a World Cup but no one remembers that. France in 1998 was all about Zidane, wasn’t it? As a player, he won the Champions League twice and five league titles across two countries. Yet he was described by Eric Cantona as a glorified water carrier.
There are few coaches who have been as maligned in this World Cup as Deschamps (that the other two names on that list — Roberto Martinez and Gareth Southgate — are in the semis alongside him must mean something). It’s not as if the criticism is unfounded — his ultra-talented French team have often struggled in matches, doing just about enough to get past vastly inferior opponents.
In their game against Australia, they needed a dodgy penalty and what was either a touch of genius or a fluke goal by Paul Pogba. Journalists in Samara debating the worst game of the tournament after witnessing a contender in England-Sweden mostly settled on Denmark-France.
Even against Uruguay, France weren’t the spectacular team that one might expect an outfit boasting Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba to be. Oscar Tabarez’s team arguably had the better first half before a goal off a set-piece and a goalkeeping error did them in. “Really is alchemy from Deschamps to make a team with this much flamboyant talent this dull. An act of genius,” went one of the countless tweets disparaging Deschamps.
There are critics who brand him a charlatan who is trying to mimic France’s 1998 Cup winning team and his then-boss Aime Jacquet’s pragmatic tactics. His dabbling with a three-man midfield has sparked comparisons with the Deschamps-Emmanuel Petit-Christian Karembeu troika from 1998 while his use of the barren Olivier Giroud has mirrored Jacquet’s deployment of the similarly goalless Stephane Guivarc’h.
Yet others come up with more philosophical arguments. France have no identity, they say, despite Deschamps being in charge of the team for so long — the quarterfinal against Argentina saw him become France’s longest-serving manager ever.
“France have three points but no clear identity after six years of Deschamps,” was how The Guardian headlined their report of the Australia game. And that is, of course, Deschamps’ fault for the team mirrors the manager. But can someone do what Deschamps has done as a manager — take Monaco to the Champions League final, resurrect Juventus from the depths of the Calciopoli, take France to final of the Euros — with no identity? If he has one, then what is it, this mythical thing that no one seems to be able to identify?
Perhaps the best insight Deschamps has ever revealed about himself is a chat with his mentor, and his first manager at Nantes, Jean-Claude Suaudeau, first published in 2012, in French in France Football, then translated into English and published in The Blizzard. In that, when Suaudeau brings up football styles and lavishes praise on Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, Deschamps lets slip a piece himself. “For me, pleasure can only exist in success,” he says. “I have this pleasure.
I remember horrible games that I was happy to win, without having taken pleasure while playing them. Playing well with no victory in the end, I say, ‘No’, definitely.” Maybe, that is Deschamps’ identity — to not care about identities or styles or philosophies, to just try win the game. If his team can absorb that from their manager just two more times, the water carrier will be a World Cup winner twice over.
Man in charge:
A defensive midfielder during his playing days, Deschamps won the 1998 WC with the French national team.
If France become champs, Deschamps will become the third man to win the WC as both player and manager. Mario Zagallo (Brazil) and Franz Beckenbauer are two people to achieve the feat.