In Villeneuve-d’Ascq,
There are evenings that we dream of as a kid, warm under the duvet with our blanket under our arm but, in the majority of cases, it remains a dream. For Benjamin Pavard, this dream turned into reality, Tuesday evening, on the occasion of the victory of the Blues against Scotland, closing an international window perfectly managed by the DD gang after having snatched the qualification from Euro 2024 against the Netherlands five days earlier. Delicate on the right side for a little while now, criticized from all sides for his poor performance in Blue, crossing the World Cup in Qatar almost like a ghost, the boy will finally have burst the screen, at home, in Pierre-Mauroy stadium, where it all started for him in 2015, scoring a historic double header.
Historic because no defender had achieved such a feat since Mamadou Sakho, one furious evening at the Stade de France, against Ukraine, in 2014. The context was not the same, of course, and the evil tongues will say that it was only a friendly match against the Scots who were still very drunk after their qualification for the next Euro in Germany. However, this XXL performance still comes at a crucial moment in his career in Blue. The one where Deschamps, in his infinite kindness, ended up granting him what he had been asking for for so many years now, namely to occupy the position that is his at the club, as a central hinge.
Giroud dubs Pavard the scorer
We would have liked to see the color of his curls in the mixed zone but the man of the match remained in the locker room. We then fall back on Aurélien Tchouaméni, who tells us that his teammate “knew he was expected, he was keen to put in a good performance, that’s what he did, we’re happy for him”. If his first goal to equalize at 1-1 remains a classic among classics (crossed header at the near post from a corner), the second on the other hand was praised by a specialist of the genre, his great friend Olivier Giroud. “He dives well at the near post on a good cross from Kylian, he is there, on the lookout, in the right place, at the right time. It’s a real attacker’s goal,” confirms the Milanese.
Pavard could even have made history a second time – after his goal against Argentina in 2018 – by becoming the first central defender of the French team to score a hat-trick, but he missed a few centimeters to push bottoms the good cross from Mbappé (38th). The northerner will console himself by saying that he is the first player to have scored a double header in the French team since a certain Zinédine Zidane in the World Cup final in 1998. “I would have liked him to score the hat-trick but you can’t have everything in life”, philosophized Ibrahima Konaté, his evening friend in central defense.
Deschamps appreciated
If Deschamps greeted his double scorer of the evening, this is not where he was expecting him first. The boss especially wanted to assess the ability of his player in the defensive phases and, if he did not have 12,000 opportunities to shine from this point of view, the fault of the Scots who were not very enterprising, he was sharp in duels and decisive once or twice in his anticipation of ball trajectories to cut off opposing projections. “I remember these two goals, but also his attitude as a central defender,” the coach insisted at a press conference. He was effective in a role that suits him better. I told him at the start of the internship, from the moment he is in difficulty and not confident on the right, he was going to have a role in this rally. »
Will this match be enough to make him a credible candidate for the position of starting central defender in the next matches which will count for the Blues? It’s hard to believe it. Because Upamecano and Konaté have a real head start on him, given their very good performances in Qatar last winter, and it is hard to imagine DD depriving himself of his hunting dog Lucas Hernandez to the left of this hinge.
This is also what he recalled on Tuesday evening in the depths of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium: “He knows it too, in the middle, there are people… There is a lot of competition. » While waiting to see what room for maneuver he has in blue in this position, the main thing was already to perform well for his big debut behind. What he did brilliantly in front of an audience fully committed to his cause and who did not hesitate to repeat the refrain of 2018. Enough to give him back a smile and the certainty, after months of doubts, that he has indeed his place in this France group a few months before a new adventure on German soil. This was also the meaning of Mbappé’s message, who gave him the captain’s armband as he left the field, just to end in style an evening that he will not soon forget.