No surprises. In the home stretch before Euro 2024 (June 14 to July 14), Didier Deschamps continues to trust his “hard core of around twenty” players. The French coach revealed, Thursday March 14, the 23 footballers called to play in the Blues’ two preparation matches, against Germany (March 23, in Lyon) and Chile (March 26, in Marseille).
This first gathering of the year 2024 is already momentous. While Kylian Mbappé’s partners prepare for the Euro, players who have not yet secured their place for the competition in Germany only have two international windows – that of March and two matches at the beginning of June – to convince Didier Deschamps .
Note: the returns of Ibrahima Konaté (13 caps, Liverpool), Benjamin Pavard (52 caps, 5 goals, Inter Milan), Aurélien Tchouaméni (29 caps, 3 goals, Real Madrid) and Moussa Diaby (9 selections, Aston Villa). Absent during the November window, they returned to the group after injuries.
The young Parisian Warren Zaire-Emery (18 years old) also returns to the Blues after a first match marked by a start, a goal and an injury, against Gibraltar (14-0), on November 18, 2023. “He has a big volume of play, technical quality, passing, aggressiveness in recovery, despite a small size. It is not for nothing that he has been a starter in his club since the start of the season,” praised Didier Deschamps.
On the other hand, “WZE”‘s teammate at PSG, Bradley Barcola, will still have to wait before discovering the France A team. Expected to replace Kingsley Coman, injured in the left knee, the young Parisian striker will join Clairefontaine (Yvelines), but to take part in the preparation of Thierry Henry’s French Olympic team. This “player with great potential” is “one of the players we follow, with a series of matches where he has done great things”, recognized the French coach, who preferred to recall the right winger from Aston Villa , Moussa Diaby, and his “ten selections” on the clock. Trained at PSG, then spent in Serie A (Crotone) and the Bundesliga (Bayer Leverkusen), the 24-year-old Parisian now shines in the Premier League, where his club is in the running to finish in the top 4 of the championship and win the League Europa Conference.
The psychological aspect of penalties
The French coach took advantage of the press conference on Thursday to attack the national technical director (DTN) of French football, Hubert Fournier, who had announced on RMC Sport the launch of a specific training plan to improve the performance of French teams in the field of penalties. Visibly stung by this outing – he whose team remains on two failures in the field, at Euro 2021 against Switzerland, then in the final of the 2022 World Cup against Lionel Messi’s Argentina -, Didier Deschamps judged the comments of the DTN “inappropriate, even disrespectful”.
Before developing at length what he no longer describes as a “lottery”: “My position is that it cannot be worked on. It’s impossible to recreate in training the same psychological and athletic condition as in matches, with overtime of 120 or even 143 minutes for us at the World Cup.” Sweeping the study results with his experience, he maintained the importance of the psychological dimension of this phase of play. “Since I have been in office, out of 149 matches, there have been 18 affected by a potential training session. penalties and, certainly, we lost the two where it went to penalties. As a player I scored some without doing specific sessions.”
Concerning the participation of players from the French team in the Paris Olympic Games this summer – Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann or Olivier Giroud – Didier Deschamps returned the responsibility to the clubs and to the coach of the French Olympic team, Thierry Henry . “It’s not me who decides. If Thierry decides and the club agrees, this player will be in the team,” the coach said with a smile, while recalling that “for a player, it is very complicated to string together the two competitions physically and psychologically.”
Goalkeepers: Alphonse Areola, Mike Maignan, Brice Samba.
Defenders: Jonathan Clauss, Lucas Hernandez, Théo Hernandez, Ibrahima Konaté, Jules Koundé, Benjamin Pavard, William Saliba, Dayot Upamecano.
Midfield: Eduardo Camavinga, Youssouf Fofana, Adrien Rabiot, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Warren Zaire-Emery.
Forwards: Ousmane Dembélé, Moussa Diaby, Olivier Giroud, Antoine Griezmann, Randal Kolo Muani, Kylian Mbappé, Marcus Thuram.
