France magic their way into the World Cup quarter-finals against Poland and Robert Lewandowski thanks to an incredible show by Kylian Mbappé: But the strings in the Les Bleus game are pulled by a 22-year-old. Aurélien Tchouaméni is the French Toni Kroos and was a boss even as a youngster.
Les Bleus are great names. Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud or Ousmane Dembélé. They stand for spectacle, their dribbles and goals are the highlights of the French, who played strongly at this World Cup in Qatar. They run up and down on TV, Tiktok, Instagram and other social media.
But the new boss on the French pitch is a 22-year-old youngster, even if in the 3-1 (1-0) win against Poland in the World Cup round of 16 at the Al Thumama Stadium in the south of Doha, of course, double packer Mbappé is on everyone’s lips . Aurélien Djani Tchouameni. He is the grass eater in Didier Deschamps’ team, the vacuum cleaner. A six that the German team needed so much. And the young midfield boss is a ball magnet and distributor. A relay, almost a copy of ex-DFB star Toni Kroos – from whom he copied a trick or two from his club Real Madrid.
“It wasn’t easy. The Poles were very well organised,” said France coach Didier Deschamps after the game and praised the “team performance right from the start”. Quarterfinals, that’s good. The coach doesn’t single out any players, but Tchouaméni, the midfielder and French Kroos, deserves a special pat on the back because he once again boasts that the team “worked really well”.
With just 17 caps under his belt, Tchouaméni himself may shrug off the label of leader of France’s new generation, but it is the youngster who is assuming responsibility at France’s vital defensive centre. While he is at Real, via Bordeaux and Monaco, he moves to the Royals in the summer, acts a little more offensively, starting in the round of 16 and in the group games as the only central six. A play behind Adrien Rabiot, with whom he gets along brilliantly, although they hardly have any warm-up time together before the World Cup.
It is Tchouaméni who has the back of the many offensive artists around Mbappé. He also stands in the center of the defense against the squad of world footballer Robert Lewandowski and distributes the balls in the build-up game. They’re simple balls. The 22-year-old isn’t looking for Instagram highlights and is impressively calm in his game. As if he had already been in several World Cup knockout rounds. His diagonal balls are not yet of Kroos’ quality, but he can convince with more athleticism, for example when he puts his body in and intercepts some of the many Polish balls.
If one of the central defenders moves out of the back four for a tackle, Tchouaméni withdraws. He is also never too bad for the simple return pass to keeper Hugo Lloris. Above all, however, he runs cleverly into every hole and thus does not allow the Poles to develop at all. Experts who saw France as badly weakened by the failure of midfield engine N’Golo Kanté should see a better lesson.
The duel of the French with Les Bleus is initially a long scan. But then, of all people, the man who pulls the strings on the defensive and not the Mbappés or Dembélés makes the first exclamation mark. Tchouaméni’s long-range shot in the 13th minute presents keeper Wojciech Szczesny with a first test.
Otherwise, France does little. Little is said about the otherwise dangerous outside. Jules Koundé pulls from afar, played by Tchouaméni, and Giroud just misses after Dembélé’s preparatory work. But apart. In the middle of the first half, Les Bleus gave the Poles a lot of possession, Tchouaméni had to gain space and win tackles. But Lewandowski and Co. don’t know what to do with the playground equipment. It’s a weird game. France doesn’t want to, Poland can’t.
But then, out of nowhere, huge holes like opportunities arise as both teams make catastrophic mistakes. Nobody really wants to just score goals. France is very lucky with a top-class double chance by Poland, on the other hand Mbappé is blocked or asked time and time again.
But before the break, the Équipe Tricolore wakes up again. After a simple pass to the clever Giroud, France made it 1-0 in the 44th minute. The striker hits the right-footed corner from a spin – and now has 52 goals in the history books as the country’s all-time top scorer (ahead of legend Thierry Henry).
After the break, France dropped a little more and Tchouaméni, who had the most touches in the first half with 59 touches, continued to draw his fingers calmly and unobtrusively. If player types don’t attract attention, they do everything right in the game. That was already the case with Kroos in the DFB-Elf and still applies to him at Real. Lessons from former international and Croatia’s Luka Modric appear to have paid off. “You learn every day working with them,” Tchouaméni says on more than one occasion.
After a great but deflected Mbappé finish and a Giroud dream goal from an overhead kick that doesn’t count because of a previous foul, all Polish attempts to attack really fizzle out. Lewandowski cannot be seen. This is also due to the good organization by Tchouaméni. The game ripples along, spectators yawn. Everyone here in the stadium is already realizing that absolutely nothing is going to burn here.
And so, in the 66th minute, Deschamps replaced midfield boss Tchouaméni, who had received a yellow card, in good time before his important chess piece was missing in the quarter-finals against England. The new France boss, the silent driver, is convincing at the time with Toni Kroos values: 79 ball contacts (Theo Hernández has the second most with 63), 72 passes, 89 percent pass accuracy.
Then the big Mbappé show begins because Poland doesn’t even show an ounce of interest in taking part in this football game. The Équipe plays a clean counterattack, Mbappé has far too much space after playing through Giroud and Dembélé and is not attacked at all. Without humor he hits the ball from the penalty area to make it 2-0 (74′). The game has finally been decided, and some of the 40,000 fans are already leaving the stadium.
But before Robert Lewandowski miserably missed a penalty in added time, only to then try to score a consolation goal from Poland when he tried again (Lloris had left the goal line too early), France went one better. Mbappé receives the ball on the left corner of the penalty area. A short wobble and his opponent is shaken off. The striker turns from guard with a simple movement and curls the ball into the corner of the long goal corner with his inimitable shooting technique (90′). Dream goal to 3:0.
Mbappé is a phenomenon. At just 23, he has already overtaken a certain Lionel Messi in the World Cup scorers’ list and is level with Cristiano Ronaldo. There are now nine goals in the biggest tournament in the world, Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 goals should soon be broken at Mbappé’s pace, in four games in Qatar he scores five goals and provides two assists. He also has to thank France’s Toni Kroos and Aurélien Tchouaméni for backing his many stalls.