In Düsseldorf,
Before weaving a basket of praise for the greatest of the smallest players in the history of the France team, a confession, first: after around fifteen minutes of play against Austria on Monday, after N’Golo Kanté’s third, not really reassuring loss of the ball in the middle of the field, we started to say that the butterflies in the stomach born from his good match against Luxembourg had already gone away. Nothing surprising, moreover.
Luxembourg being what it is (not great), high-level football being what it is (physically demanding and ruthless), it was ultimately logical that this beautiful story that we all wanted to believe in ended before have started. From there, two questions emerged.
1. How could a 33-year-old player coming off a long string of injuries and whose worn body had ended up settling for lackluster matches in the distant and uninteresting Saudi League return to prominence in one of the best world selections?
And above all 2. How, but how could we have let ourselves be fooled to this extent by this fable of Father Castor-Deschamps on the evening of the announcement of his list on the TF1 set?
A crazy defensive withdrawal from space
And finally, there was light. Butterflies too. Here, a first ball scraped into the Austrian feet at the entrance to the French area, there a second snatched with great difficulty in the middle of the field, and so on until this masterpiece of defensive withdrawal from the 85th minute of play that will remain frozen in our pupils until our last breath (we are very serious). Shame on us who doubted you, NG.
Starting late and not having much fuel left in the engine – we thought – Kanté did not seem able to catch up with Wimmer, who then flew alone towards the Maignan goal to crucify the Blues on the altar of realism and hamper their entry into the competition.
Yes, yes, but no, no. In the time it takes to say it, thanks to a few supersonic leg turns, the former Chelsea midfielder not only managed to get back to Wimmer’s level but he ended up actually passing in front of him to slip in the saving paw, the one that worth much more than two points: a place at the Louvre for eternity. Here again, we are hardly exaggerating.
We then come to mind many laudatory statements players about him in recent weeks.
Jonathan Clauss: “On the pitch, he is capable of playing two positions at the same time. I think there are two Kantés: one who runs, the other plays football. It’s very impressive in terms of volume and intelligence of play.”
Theo Hernandez: “I thought we had an extra player the other day in training”
Marcus Thuram: “I have the impression that three of them came to Clairefontaine. It’s horrible, we can’t play in training anymore! We know we’ve won when we have him with us. He is incredible. »
The Inter striker doesn’t think he’s saying that well. With “NG” in its ranks, the French team has never lost a single match in a major competition (twelve wins for four draws). This feeling of ubiquity given off by Kanté to his teammates, whose clichés repeated throughout the conference had almost ended up tiring us out, nevertheless translates materially on the field. All you need to do is take a look at the player’s heatmap. Eloquent.
Deschamps not a little proud of his choice
His performance was duly praised by Didier Deschamps, who had warned us that he had not reprinted it to look pretty and that we would quickly see what we were going to see. And we saw. “Just look at what he did. So. I took him for that, from the moment I was certain that he had recovered all his athletic abilities. He has tactical intelligence, the ability to recover balls and project himself. He was radiant today, radiant,” he said, not a little proud of his discovery.
“It’s nice to be back with the French team, to rediscover my abilities, to feel good, to be able to give the maximum with my teammates,” declared the main interested party, elected man of the match by UEFA. Afterwards there is a lot of praise, but the work we do together, we fight for the team, for the result, today it smiled on us. The desire is there, we want to give everything for the team. » If he still has a hard time putting himself forward, due to his discreet nature, the boy also knows that Deschamps expects a little more from him than in the past.
OUR EURO 2024 FILE
In a group lacking leaders since the combined retirements of Lloris, Varane and Mandanda, Kanté must impose himself, in his own way, and take the young people with him by example. A role that he tries to take seriously, although it is not innate to him. “To say that I like it is a big word,” he declared Monday evening. It comes naturally to me, we want to help the team in any way possible, and if that means being a relay from the coach, we do it. It’s really about pulling the team up. » For the moment it seems to be working quite well.