At the Parc des Princes,
The public of the France team is not that of PSG, we saw it again Thursday evening with this somewhat clumsy succession of “Ola”, but there must have been some, during the France-Ireland match relocated to the Park due to rugby on Friday in Saint-Denis, which supports both the Blues and the Rouge et Bleu. They must have had tears in their eyes when remembering that last summer, Paris had gone out of its way to recruit Aurélien Tchouaméni, before he finally chose to settle down in Madrid.
Because the Merengue midfielder showed against the Irish a summary of the formidable player that he is (and that he will be even more so in the years to come). There is obviously this caressing goal from a distance, with the flat of the right foot, towards the small opposite net of Bazunu, for the opening score for the French (19th). But above all there was this crazy slaughter in the middle of the field, from start to finish of the meeting. Unlike Ousmane Dembélé, always quick to make a mess on his right side before cleaning up himself by missing almost all his last moves, Tchouaméni always finishes what he started.
Deschamps hopes to keep his new guy safe
By first recovering an incredible number of balls (10 against the Irish), then improving them in stride, either by a laser pass (with a success rate of 95.3%), or by a ball lift , or by a shot. “He has this ability to hit the ball and score but, where he was really very efficient, it was in recovery,” agreed Didier Deschamps Thursday evening, speaking to TF1. He must have this. He doesn’t have it all the time but the France team needs an Aurélien Tchouaméni as much as possible in this area. »
This being said, we can now come back to this artistic strike of the 19th minute. By simply placing his flat foot to use the inertia of the ball, after Mbappé’s subtle back pass, where 90% of the players would have preferred the mulasse strike, Tchouaméni showed that the work paid off. Crossed in the mixed zone, he tells us: “We work a lot on the strikes at the club, in Madrid, at the end of training. Coach Ancelotti gives us a lot of room with “Cama” [Camavinga], he says that we don’t score enough goals, so we try to work on our striking technique, it paid off today, we must continue on this path. »
A first season of adaptation to Real
Aware of holding a hell of a colt in his hands, the Italian coach of Real does not pass him anything. Last season, when he felt he was falling short of what his potential suggests, notably on his return from the World Cup, Ancelotti did not hesitate to put him on the bench regularly. On arrival, if the former Monegasque had played 51 matches in total, he had only started 28, for 14 short matches played in full. It’s not the same music this season. Established in the sentinel position in a 4-4-2 diamond during the first four championship matches, the Frenchman is on the verge of becoming a centerpiece of Ancelotti’s new system.
Although he flinched a little in the mixed zone when it was pointed out to him that he had changed compared to last season, the boy ended up readily admitting that he was “growing in strength”. “I was injured, I was sick, so we will say that the dynamic last season was a little less positive. But I kept confidence in myself, I continued to work while keeping the same mentality and today we can say that I am good. » Two years almost to the day after his first selection in Blue (September 21, 2021 against Serbia), Tchouaméni is now one of the captains of this France team. To the point of making us forget N’Golo Kanté the Saudi and Pogba the badly injured, when they were at their prime in 2018? There is only one step that we will not be long in taking.