The shock is at the height of the explosion. By announcing his international retirement at the age of 33, on this Monday which is already too depressing for our tastes, Antoine Griezmann leaves us with heavy hearts and moist eyes, too stunned as we are to already envisage the future without him. No, today, there is no tomorrow that is worth it.
Without warning, that’s perhaps the worst part, deep down. Because no one could expect such a decision, not even Didier Deschamps, who was simply kept informed a few days before the rest of the world. However, when we think about it, the signs were there, before our eyes, palpable if not obvious.
This solo tour of the field at the Parc des Princes, at the end of September, when the rest of the team had already gone to the shower without even having taken the time to thank the supporters, after an ugly defeat against Italy, was therefore his way of saying “goodbye” to us. He was saying goodbye to us and we didn’t understand him.
Because we were not in the secret of the gods – unlike Philippe Diallothe president of the FFF who spoke this Monday of a “half-surprise” and of a “reflection in progress since the Euro” – and that there is only by being in the heart of the reactor that we could have measured the extent of this physical and mental wear and tear that he opposed to Didier Deschamps to argue his decision.
The (true) end of a blessed era
Having to give up the captain’s armband in favor of Kylian Mbappé had already left a scar that his failed Euro, he who was carried around in all positions like a common adjustment variable, did not help to heal. We can easily imagine that the successive retirements of his lifelong friends, Hugo Lloris and Raphaël Varane yesterday, Olivier Giroud today, did the rest.
At 33, the last elephant has not found the strength to continue the adventure for a few more years with a French team that he holds in too high esteem not to respect it, if he feels that he cannot no longer give him everything. Because that’s what “Grizi” and the Blues are about, a passionate love story that tolerates no let-up. It’s the story of a guy who always placed the rooster above all other considerations, even if it meant swallowing snakes as big as your arm as long as it was for the good and success of the French team. .
Griezmann is also and above all the story of a France which wins. Arriving on the still smoking ruins of Knysna, after Laurent Blanc’s lightning spell at the helm of this team, with his youthful face and his blond hair like the Olympic gold medals he spent his summer celebrating, the Mâconnais is the symbol of the renewal of the Blues on the international scene, the base on which the new coach Didier Deschamps relied to build his future success.
Tears of sadness, tears of joy
Arriving on tiptoe, he, the unknown to the general public who had to go into exile in Spain to experience the glory that the clubs and French training stubbornly refused him, Griezmann did not take long to make a name for himself. name and reputation. That of a total player who will give body and soul for the tricolor jersey. Which Didier Deschamps did not fail to greet, a few minutes after the announcement of his “favorite”.
“Antoine was and will remain a monument of French football, one of the greatest players in its history. His involvement in the results we have achieved over the last decade is immense, said the coach. Driven by a collective spirit at all times and a rare altruism among offensive players, Antoine has always brought honor to football and the blue jersey. He never cheated. »
How can we forget our crocodile tears after the elimination in the quarter-finals of the Brazilian World Cup in 2014 against Germany? They already said everything about the unfailing dedication that would be his for a decade. The tears, again, two years later, when a stranger named Eder came to shatter the dreams of an entire people at Euro 2016, just a few days after Griezmann’s formidable double against the Mannschaft, during a semi-final for history at the Vélodrome stadium in Marseille.
Until this immense happiness of 2018, where the boy will finally obtain the consecration at the end of a World Cup crossed as a captain, in his image, sublime and industrious, without ever pulling the cover for himself, leaving to the rising star Kylian Mbappé the glory of the newspaper front pages, to better savor this crazy collective adventure. But the time for his masterclass had not yet come.
Doha’s masterpiece
It will come four years later, after a “Benzemesque” parenthesis which will leave us sometimes hungry (Euro 2021), sometimes with stars in our eyes (League of Nations 2021), in Qatar. Used as a relay environment to meet the demands of balance so dear to DD, Grizou will be at the same time waiter, butler, wine merchant and cook, accepting the work of the shadows without complaining to allow Mbappé to shine better.
A sacrifice that will not be one for him, the junkyard dog always quick to wag his tail when it comes to going to the putty, the man that Diego Simeone has shaped to become the true war machine that we know today. Finally, there remains this cursed Euro 2024 where everything went wrong. If he was also moved to all possible and (un)imaginable positions – put Grizou as right winger against Belgium, seriously, Didier? – to allow Bondy’s one-eyed man to flare up, this time, his heart was no longer in it.
We clearly felt this during his press conferences and his visits to the mixed zone. The eyes were less sparkling, the smile less radiant. Just like his legendary chest and his ability to repeat efforts, he who was coming off a wild season with Atlético de Madrid, but to reduce his slump to one less physical performance would be intellectual dishonesty.
A blood sausage ending
The decisions of Didier Deschamps, his mentor, cannot be totally unrelated to this decision as brutal as it is painful. Appointed vice-vice-captain behind a boy younger than him and with whom he shares neither values nor mentality, downgraded after being put on the bench to everyone’s surprise against Spain in the semi-final, Griezmann Perhaps it was said that his time had come. With this coach, at least.
Life is not a novel and love stories usually end badly. Nevertheless, we will say what we want, this hasty, not to say botched, ending, like that, between two tasteless gatherings, pinches our hearts as rarely in the past. Because this story would have deserved a thousand other endings, all more joyful. So, since we cannot rewrite the past, we can still choose to design the future. That of a return of Grizi, like Zidane eighteen years before him, as a romantic hero, to lead his last fight, the quest for a third star, in 2026, in the United States. It seems that there, they are fond of happy endings.