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Few people know how to win a World Cup like Didier Deschamps.
Deschamps, one of three men after Brazil’s Mario Zagallo and West Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer to claim the trophy as both a player and a coach, has roughly the same reputation in both roles: boring.
On the pitch he was an unattractive holding midfielder who today draws unflattering comparisons to his more gifted Juventus and France midfield colleague Zinedine Zidane, the man widely expected to replace him as national team coach after this World Cup.
Deschamps’ quality has often been overlooked, but reports from the time highlight his influence. The New York Times player ratings after France’s final victory over Brazil at the 1998 World Cup, for example, named him the best player on the pitch – ahead of Zidane, who scored two goals – and two years later he was named in World Soccer magazine’s Euro 2000 squad. Deschamps was better on the ball than he was given credit for, but he was renowned above all for his discipline.
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Since he became France coach in 2012, they reached the 2016 European Championship final, losing in extra time, won the 2018 World Cup and reached the final of the latter again in 2022, where they lost on penalties. But the constant criticism is that Deschamps never really took the handbrake off.
He often deployed a central midfielder out wide to provide midfield balance. Half-hearted attempts to organize a smooth and unpredictable attack never succeeded; he always relied on the stronger Olivier Giroud in attack, who became France’s all-time top scorer under Deschamps.
However, this time everything is different.
The French scored 10 goals in three group stage matches, including four from Kylian Mbappe, overtaking Giroud’s record. In previous group stages under Deschamps at major tournaments they have scored eight, four, three, four, six and two.
Okay, playing against a weak Iraqi team and a Norwegian B team helped boost that total, but Deschamps now finds himself with so many attacking options he can’t miss and relatively few disciplined midfielders. This time he seems to be having fun.
Mbappe hit the ground running, Ousmane Dembele scored a brilliant hat-trick against Norway, Michael Olise provided a series of dribbles and through balls, and Désiré Douhet also played on the left flank. Four real strikers.
The question is whether Deschamps wants to continue fighting in the playoffs.
Deschamps missed the final group game against Norway when he returned to France following the death of his mother (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)
The lesson of World Cup history is that past winners of the tournament, in various forms, have often switched from using four strikers to using three in the latter stages.
Take Argentina in 1986. In their first four games they used two strikers: Jorge Valdano and either Claudio Borghi or Pedro Pasculli. Diego Maradona obviously played as a number 10. Jorge Burruchaga, although technically out of the midfield diamond, then raced forward to effectively become a fourth striker and provide key goals and assists.
However, before the famous 2-1 quarter-final win over England, coach Carlos Bilardo removed Pasculli (despite having scored the only goal in the previous round against Uruguay) and brought in an extra defender. Maradona now played alongside Valdano, with Burruchaga as the third striker rather than the fourth.
The French team that won the 1998 World Cup looked much the same. Aimé Jacquet started the tournament in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Stéphane Guivarc up top, Thierry Henry on both flanks, and Zidane and Youri Djorkaeff floating between the lines.
They played excellent football, but from the quarter-finals onwards, despite scoring three goals, Henry lost his place in the starting line-up. Jacquet moved into a system in which only Zidane and Djorkaeff stood behind Guivarc. In came Christian Karembeu, a hard-working midfielder rather than an outspoken striker, who provided discipline alongside Deschamps and Emmanuel Petit.
Brazil in 2002 had a different system: three defenders, Cafu and Roberto Carlos as full-backs, Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho as the three strikers, and then two midfielders trying to hold everything together. Initially, coach Luiz Felipe Scolari used one reliable midfielder, Gilberto Silva, and a creative attacking midfielder, Juninho.
Brazil made it to the quarterfinals, but Scolari did not consider this a winning approach in the tournament. In the eighth meeting with England, he abandoned Juninho, invited a second strong midfielder in the person of Kleberson, and Brazil played more cautiously on the way to success.
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Argentina also claims this in 2022. Lionel Messi had trailed Lautaro Martinez early in the tournament, with Angel Di Maria and Papu Gomez leading from the wing, but their opening 2-1 defeat to Saudi Arabia forced Lionel Scaloni to reconsider his decision. Since Julian Alvarez replaced Martinez at the top, Scaloni has always used three natural central midfielders: Alexis Mac Allister and Enzo Fernandez, playing alongside Rodrigo De Paul.
There are a lot of World Cup winning teams missing from this list, but some of them didn’t start out with four strikers. In 2006, Italy used energetic central midfielder Simone Perrotta on the flank – much like Deschamps did in 2018 with Blaise Matuidi or Corentin Tolisso.
In 2010, Spain initially used five midfielders behind one striker and ended up with four midfielders and two strikers after they struggled for penetration in a 1-0 win against Switzerland in their first group game. Germany, meanwhile, experimented with different options in 2014 but stuck with a 4-3-3 formation with Mesut Ozil on the flank – when a 4-2-3-1 with him as a number 10 might have been more attractive.
In other words, it has been a very long time since anyone has won a World Cup with four true strikers, as Deschamps currently has. You’ll probably have to revert to the 4-2-4 formation that Brazil used in 1970. They remain the most famous World Cup team of them all.
It remains to be seen whether Deschamps is so bold.
Its own history, as well as that of previous World Cup-winning teams, suggests that one of its great attacking four – probably Douai – will be sacrificed at the knockout stage.
This will attract some fans to Deschamps. But this could bring him another world championship.