Advantage France. On a cool summer’s day in Nizhny Novgorod, jewel of the upper Volga, Russia 2018 turned a slight but significant shade of blue.
There are different ways of announcing yourself as the most likely winners of a World Cup. With nine days to go before the house lights come up the ideal outcome for Didier Deschamps’ France would have been a loosening of the throttle, a moment for those delicious attacking talents to click together and illuminate the late stages.
There is of course a basic problem here. For that situation to arise it would be necessary for Didier Deschamps’ France to be somebody else’s France.
Instead these Bleus were compact, powerful, careful in possession and disciplined in defence. It worked, too. This is how champions play at times. And it was enough to dish up a 2-0 quarter-final victory against tough opponents, aided by a set-piece goal and a howler from Fernando Muslera, who lunged at Antoine Griezmann’s second-half shot with a strange flap of the wrists like someone desperately trying to dry a fresh coat of nail varnish.
At the final whistle there was a slight emotional disjunct. Uruguay were distraught, falling to the turf in a line. The players in white just stopped running and stood still, a team who had won without ever needing to reach down into those deep emotional registers.
Deschamps is not a popular manager among journalists, whom he appears to hold in mild contempt, which is quietly returned. Here he came wandering out at last to join his players a little awkwardly, offering full-body hugs to the glamour boys of his own brand of devil-may-care attack, Hugo Lloris, Raphaël Varane and Steven Nzonzi.
But it is easy also to feel sympathy for Deschamps. The manager has in his hands a golden ticket, a harvest of playing talent beyond anything else at this tournament For Deschamps now a unique and vaguely terrifying double is within touching distance. France have already failed to win the Euros at home. Can they go one further and fail to win the World Cup?
This is the dilemma, the jeopardy that faces a manager blessed with such resources and with a scenario where, all things being equal, France really should win this.
Two tough but far from irresistible opponents will stand in the way of discharging that burden, the talent‑bomb at his disposal. In the middle of which the feeling remains, for all the moments of fizz from Kylian Mbappé against Argentina, that this team have never been allowed to hunt for victory rather than push for it, to reach out into the far corners of their own exhilarating depths.
Do they need to? France looked ominously in control, albeit in a game where Uruguay barely played a part. Edinson Cavani’s absence was a huge blow, not just for his craft but for his willingness to run like a man being chased by a swarm of wasps. His replacement Cristhian Stuani was mediocre in this company. In an hour on the pitch Stuani completed three passes. He gave the ball away with a bad touch five times. So he was at least doing something.
There was a first little flicker of Mbappé after six minutes, a spurt from near halfway inside two blue shirts, with that slaloming twitch of feet, and the strange sense of watching something moving inside a static frame, a frieze where all the other figures simply stand and watch.
France’s opening goal came from another set piece in the summer of the stationary ball, a World Cup where the world has finally learnt the full value of the mixer.
Perhaps this is how it really is for England: not so much making progress as wearing the same pair of unfashionably bell‑bottomed corduroy slacks so long that in the end everyone else just catches up.
Griezmann’s delivery was precise. Varane’s run was swift and perfectly timed, the header flicked into the far corner. There was no innovation, just a basic routine executed very well. The role of VAR is worth considering in this. Nobody grabbed or blocked or balked Varane. Defenders have reacted to the first wave of grapple‑penalties by backing off. A middle ground will be located at some point.
Perhaps it is worth recalling the lost art of forgetting about the other guy and simply trying to put your head on the ball.
Paul Pogba played well, passing nicely and holding his ground in the centre. There was the most basic of cameos from Ousmane Dembélé, who it seems really isn’t going to get the chance to illuminate this World Cup. Forward runs were restrained, spaces held, the full-backs disciplined.
France are good enough to win the World Cup playing like this. They are also good enough to play with a great deal more verve, to fire the imagination of the players as well as those spectating. Whether they need to, or whether they actually can having been so restrained thus far will perhaps be key to the next nine days of destiny for Didier.
