Of course, it wasn’t pretty. Didier Deschamps won’t care. All that matters, the French coach would strenuously argue, is that they got there. That could be said about France’s winning goal and the very 1-0 last-16 win over Belgium it decided.
After 85 minutes of what had perhaps been the worst football in this tournament – outside, maybe, some of England’s games – substitute Randal Kolo Muani tried a speculative shot that was mishit off the ground and deflected off the unfortunate Jan Vertonghen and in.
The game maybe deserved that, but it’s arguable whether France did. An otherwise sensationally talented squad made their way into the quarter-finals by dour obduracy rather than any creativity or class. It may yet take them to ultimate victory, of course, but it doesn’t make much of it memorable. The most stirring moment of the game was a tackle by Theo Hernandez on Yannick Carrasco.
The best you could say was the goal was at least preceded by a clever angled pass from Antoine Griezmann. That’s it.
That’s all France had in their team by way of playmaking. Kylian Mbappe was crowded out, everyone still waiting for his moment.
It felt like everyone was going to wait for a goal here. Instead, France got their third of the tournament, but not one has been a clean effort into the net from open play.
That wasn’t all the fault of Deschamps on this occasion. Belgium’s Italian-German manager Domenico Tedesco seemed intent on outdoing Deschamps in the dourness stakes. It meant his team didn’t do much at all, leaving so much out there.
Maybe it was a belated realisation. In the 2018 World Cup semi-final, against this same manager, Belgium had pressed forward all game only to get – and produce – nothing from a French defence that refused to budge. The thinking here seemed to be that maybe France might like a taste of their own medicine.
The nature of Belgium’s group-stage performance didn’t help. It was all the worse for the game because it pushed a Deschamps team into a situation in which they didn’t look all that comfortable. They had to have the ball and take the initiative. That isn’t for want of the players, of course. France have more than enough talent to build play in the most elaborate and expressive of ways. Just not under this manager.
Here, it seemed to result in Mbappe constantly running into blind alleys, blocked off by at least two defenders every time. With so many more Belgian players extending out from there, France’s only attacking idea was to cut the ball back to the edge of the box for a speculative shot. This happened repeatedly, the efforts appearing to get worse every time.
That is, however, what you get when you base your midfield around industry rather than innovation.
Belgium did have plenty of the latter in De Bruyne, but he didn’t have enough around him. It meant one of the game’s great driving midfielders, perhaps the best passer in modern football, was largely reduced to safe balls at the base of midfield. It was telling that Belgium’s best moments came when De Bruyne suddenly broke, once to elegantly link a counterattack, next with a typically forceful long shot from distance. Mike Maignan was strong.
This is something that shouldn’t be overlooked, as France continue to underwhelm. They are going to be very hard to beat. They just make actually winning very hard work, too.
In that, as has been said on these pages before, they are almost the modern equivalent of Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. They aren’t a side everyone is rushing to watch but they have the level of resolve that means they regularly make the latter rounds.
They have already gone one better here than in the last Euros, where they lost to Switzerland in the last 16. That shouldn’t be forgotten in all the knowing commentary about how Deschamps knows how to win tournaments, either. He’s only lifted one trophy as manager, and that despite overseeing probably the most talented squad of all over a decade.
More pressure should be on. Maybe it illustrates the limits of this approach. The next round will dictate a lot. France, however, won’t necessarily be all that interested in dictating play.