2022 World Cup final: Didier Deschamps uncertain about France’s future after Argentina’s loss
Didier Deschamps was undecided about his future as France national coach after Les Bleus narrowly missed out on winning a second consecutive World Cup.
France fell from 2-0 down to take the final against Argentina to penalties after a thrilling 3-3 draw, with a hat-trick from Kylian Mbappé, before finally succumbing to defeat.
“Even if we had won, I couldn’t have answered that question tonight,” he said when asked if he would stay on as coach.
“I have a meeting with the president early next year, and then you will find out.
“I’m very sad for my players and all my staff. If you look at the game as a whole, in the first 70 minutes we played a very aggressive and dynamic opponent and we just weren’t on the same level. We lacked a bit of energy. We made a great comeback. I went through a lot of emotions tonight and there are those who regret because we were so close to winning.”
Of Mbappé, who became the first player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final since Geoff Hurst in 1996, he said: “Kylian really made his mark in this final but unfortunately he didn’t let it go the way he would have liked , and that’s why he was so disappointed in the end, just like all the other players.”
The French squad had been stricken with flu in recent days, but Deschamps insisted the 11 who started the game had no ill effects, explaining that he replaced Olivier Giroud and Ousmane Dembélé after just 41 minutes in an attempt to get to the one some way to turn. the shape of the game.
“The whole squad has been in a tricky situation for some time and maybe that had a physical or psychological impact,” he said.
“But I wasn’t worried about the players who started the game, they were 100 per cent fit. We only had four days from the last game, so maybe there was some fatigue, but that’s no excuse.”
“We just didn’t show the same energy as in previous games – we weren’t in the game for the first hour or so.
“The substitutions were tactical choices. I wanted to make a change because I saw that we lacked freshness. I don’t blame Olivier or Ousmane because they put in a great effort, but I saw that they were not 100 per cent. It was a change of position also to take Kylian off the wing, because I saw we were in deep trouble.
“Anything is possible in football. You can change things in the blink of an eye and we almost did, but unfortunately it just wasn’t enough.”
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